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SONS OF GOD 



jssCTtnons 



BY THE 



Rev. S. D. McCONNELL, D.D. 

RECTOR OF ST. STEPHEN'S CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA 
AUTHOR OF " HISTORY OF "HE AMERICAN EPISCOPAL CHURCH," ETC. 



NEW YORK 
THOMAS WHITTAKER 

2 and 3 Bible House 

1891 






mm 

-V <;=>- —f- — ^ 

NOV I 6 



Copyright, 1891, 
By Thomas Whittaker. 



TO 
THE MEMORY OF MY DEAR FRIEND, 

A HIGH MINDED, HONORABLE MAN, 

Snjte 3Ltttie Folume 

IS 
AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. 



CONTENTS. 



SERMON PAGE 

I. The Family Record 1 

II. The All-Father 13 

III. The Church the Body of Christ ..... 25 

IV. Jesus' Working Theory of Life ..... 39 
Y. Personal Religion 53 

VI. God's Love for Men; 67 

VII. The Permanent Element in Christianity . 79 

VIII. Jesus' Estimate of Human Value .... 93 

IX. God's Love the Motive in Redemption . . 107 

X. Pilgrims and Strangers 119 

XI. The Immanent God 133 

XII. The Earth Helped the Woman 147 

XIII. The Spirit Which Was in Christ ..... 159 

XIV. The Law of Progress in Religion .... 171 
XV. Religion and Knowledge 185 

XVI. Bread or God 201 

XVII. Old and New 217 

XVIII. The First Adam 239 



I. 
THE FAMILY RECORD. 



SONS OF GOD. 



i. 

THE FAMILY KECOKD. 

fcniiflB, 23-38. 

" Jfesus foas about tfjirtg gears of age, being (as foas supposed) 
tfje son of Sosepfj . ♦ ♦ fofjicfj foas tfje son of ©airifc ♦ ♦ . fofjicfj 
foas tfje son of Jtatiafj . ♦ ♦ fofjicfj foas tfje son of Sacob ♦ ♦ . 
fofjicfj foas tfje son of ♦ . ♦ Esaac ♦ ♦ ♦ fofjtcfj foas tfje son of Libras 
fjam ♦ ♦ ♦ fofjtefj bias tfje son of Noafj ♦ ♦ ♦ fofjicfj foas tfje son of 
gUam, fofjtcfj bias tfje son of (Koto." 

The third chapter of St. Luke contains the 
strangest family-tree ever erected. Its root is God ; 
its stem Adam, Noah, Abraham and his descend- 
ants, and the fruit is Jesus. There is no break in 
the descent anywhere. There is no intimation in the 
record anywhere that at some point a new kind of 
being has come in. The author seems to assume 
with the strangest simplicity that all the persons 
named are of the same species. That "like begets 
like" is one of the truisms of human science and 
human experience. When father, son, and grand- 
son are spoken of, it is assumed without question 
that they all belong to the same kind of being. 

Now, here stands Adam in the direct line of de- 
scent between God and Jesus. The stirps is the 

3 



4 SONS OF GOD. 

same. Humanity is Divine. Which is but another 
way of saying that " we are God's offspring." This 
fundamental assumption that men literally share in 
the nature of God, as a child shares in the nature of 
its father, I believe to be the starting-point of all 
religion, and the rescuing this truth from oblivion to 
be the distinctive work of Jesus Christ. It is the 
fact which makes revelation possible. Only beings 
of the same kind can hold intercourse. A man can 
have no commerce with a stone. A fish cannot 
speak with a bird. Only a god can hold converse 
with God. 

There is a strange notion current in Western the- 
ology that human nature was transformed by the 
"Fall." It was indeed, but not in the way com- 
monly imagined. When Adam came in sight of the 
" Tree of knowledge of good and evil," God said if 
they eat of it " they shall become as gods." What 
He said was true. When they attained the point 
where they could comprehend moral distinctions, 
they passed beyond the brute, and took their places 
as sovereign citizens in the republic of spirits. 

" And so I live, you see, 
Go through the world, try, prove, reject, 
Prefer, still struggling to effect 
My warfare; happy that I can 
Be crossed and thwarted as a man; 
Not left in God's contempt apart, 
With ghastly, smooth life, dead at heart, 
Tame in earth's paddock as her prize." 

This Christian genealogical table answers the 
question which has been for a generation the most 



THE FAMILY RECORD. 5 

imperious one in science, "What is man's place in 
Nature ? " This settles it. He is not in Nature. 
He belongs to a different category. He is in the 
supernatural. 

This underlying assumption of the Fatherhood of 
God and the sonship of men is Jesus' starting-point. 
It comes out with startling distinctness in the two 
titles by which he described himself, the " Son of 
man," and the " Son of God." We miss the point 
when we think of this being true only of Him. On 
the contrary, the burden of His life was that men 
would not see that it was true of all men. It was 
because He realized in Himself exhaustively both 
natures that He felt their identity. It was when He 
was most intensely conscious of His humanity that He 
said, " I and my Father are one." 

" The man most man works best for man, 
Like God at Nazareth." 

In the parable of the Prodigal Son, the place where 
one sees the gospel in action, the son remains a son 
in all the windings of his tortuous course. He lives 
among swine, but is not turned into a pig like 
Ulysses' companions. If the strange women among 
whom he lived should have borne him children, even 
those sons of shame would have been the lineal 
descendants of the father who sat at home, but fol- 
lowed with his eyes the errant son who bore his own 
flesh and blood. When he returned, it was because 
he " came to himself." A son he was in his father's 
house, a son he was in the far country, only a son he 



6 SONS OF GOD. 

was when he came home again. The double revelation 
of Jesus is, if one may use the phrases without being 
misapprehended, the humanness of God, and the 
divineness of man. 

In the two primary formularies of Christianity this 
fact stands in the front, and is the ground of entrance 
to what follows. 

In the Lord's Prayer men are taught to make their 
intrinsic relationship to God the ground of their 
approach to him. They come to him, not as mani- 
kins to their cunning artificer, but as children to their 
father; — 

" Our Father who art in Heaven." 

In the Creed, the essential paternity of God is the 
first article. The imperious instinct of propagation 
is characteristic of God as of men. It is not good 
for God to be alone ! From this, creation comes ; — 

" I believe in God, the Father." 

And now I beg you to notice a few practical issues 
from this fundamental truth thus briefly stated and 
defended. 

(1.) The interplay of affection between God and 
men rests upon this fact. I have already called your 
attention to the fact that only beings of the same 
nature can hold intellectual commerce. This is more 
profoundly true of love than it is of knowledge. A 
man may be fond of his dog or his horse, and the 
brute may follow him with eyes of mute worship, but 
intelligent exchange of love between them there is 
none possible. They are not commensurate. Their 
natures are not in the same plane. It is as true that 



THE FAMILY RECORD. 7 

like loves like as it is that " like begets like." This 
is the significance of that pregnant article in the 
Creed, " Begotten before all worlds." That is, it is 
of the essential nature of God to love. But love 
will only go out to a person. Hence, the Son of 
man, the " first-born among many brethren," is as old 
as God. This affection of God for his children is 
the result of their essential nature, and not of their 
conduct. Human love is not contingent for its exist- 
ence upon its being either valued, understood, or 
returned by its object. The father will love the 
wayward son, the wife the unworthy husband, unde- 
terred by either indifference, stupidity, or absence. 
It has its root in their community of nature. The 
father's or wife's very identity has passed into the 
son or the husband, and cannot be recalled. But 
there is a strange notion current that God's good-will 
for a man is latent until set in motion by some delib- 
erate action on the man's part ; that it is only a pos- 
sibility instead of an actuality wrapping the man 
always round about; that it is arrested by misbe- 
havior, and may be killed by rejection. This notion 
seems to me to be in the face of the revelation of 
Jesus Christ. Its deadly error may be seen by stat- 
ing it another way. Suppose God to speak thus : — 
" I once knew and loved such or such a man. He 
was My child. I loved him. But he offended Me. 
He was fractious, coarse, obstinate, stupid. I gave 
him his warning several times, but he would not heed. 
I have now cast him off. I have thrown him out of 
My life. My love for him is dead. He is now, like 



8 SONS OF GOD. 

many others of My children, 'dreeing his weird,' but it 
does not disturb Me. He made his bed himself, and 
he must lie in it. He can never again be son of Mine." 

This is Paganism pure and simple. 

Christianity, on the other hand, thinks of God as 
saying : — 

" This, My son, is silly, stubborn, selfish. He was 
impatient of My way of life. He went away, think- 
ing, foolish child, to be out of My sight. I cannot 
send out My servants to bring him back by violence ; 
for it is his love I want, and that cannot be forced. 
But I have kept him always in My sight. I wait. His 
rags, his pains, his hunger, are My burden, but he is 
My son. When he has exhausted himself he will 
return, and My sorrow shall be turned into joy." 

But at this point let me pause to say, in parenthe- 
sis, that candor compels the recognition of the fact 
that there seems to be in the Gospel itself an intima- 
tion, of the possibility of a strange and mysterious 
kind of human action which results in dehumaniz- 
ing its subject. Just what it is is not very clear. 
" Offending one of these little ones," Jesus calls 
it. It seems to be the action of a man who, being 
consciously aware of God's affection, turns upon it 
with hate, breaks himself against it, and loses the 
semblance of a son. The action arouses the wrath 
of the Lamb Himself ! We will not delay now to 
speculate upon its issue. Whether it transforms its 
author into a being of another kind which retains 
his immortality, or whether it fixes in him a process 
of degradation which slowly carries him out of his 



THE FAMILY RECORD. 9 

unhappy being, have been variously held. This 
much is clear: it is an action which no soul can com- 
mit without the deliberate wish and intent to do so. 

(2.) Notice in the next place the relation of Jesus 
Christ to this fact of Divine Humanity. What was 
He? What did He conceive Himself to be? He 
thought it necessary to insist that He was a man. 
Whence did the necessity arise? Could any sane 
person ever doubt the fact ? Would not any compe- 
tent observer have described Him to be "An adult 
male specimen of Homo Sapiens?" Did He not 
show flesh, blood, nerves, tissues, hair, beard? Did 
He not wear clothes, eat food, and warm Himself at 
the fire ? 

" Had He not eyes, hands, organs, dimensions, 
senses, affections, passions ? Fed with the same food, 
hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same 
diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and 
cooled by the same winter and summer as another 
man ? If one prick Him would He not bleed ? If one 
tickle Him would He not laugh ? If one poison Him 
would He not die ? " 

Being so palpably man as He was, why should He 
insist upon the fact ? Why call Himself the " Son of 
man?" 

The reason is not far to seek. Being in Himself 
the ideal man, He found Himself identifying His con- 
sciousness with that of God ! Not enough, I think, 
has been made of the psychological proof of Christ's 
Divinity. He seems to show the double conscious- 
ness which belongs of necessity to such a Person. 



10 SONS OF GOD. 

He says, " I and my Father are one," and again " My 
Father is greater than I ; " and both were alike true. 
Their harmony is to be sought, not in the unity of 
any theological system, but in the unique personality 
of the Divine Man. He carried to their ultimate 
power the dual spiritual consciousness which belongs 
to all the sons of men. 

" What is man that thou art mindful of him," and 
" Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels," 
was the complex feeling of David, and of all men 
who closely question themselves. In Jesus the com- 
plexity was resolved. When man comes to himself 
he becomes aware of God. In St. Paul it wrought a 
confusion of his own identity. " It is I, yet not I, 
but Christ that dwelleth in me." 

(3.) But over against all this seem to stand the 
stubborn facts of human life. Look at men; let 
attention rest upon them until you become deeply 
impressed with what they are as they actually exist. 
Stand upon a street corner, and watch the myriad 
men and women as they hurry past. You see how 
commonplace they are. There is no divinity appar- 
ent in them. At best they are but respectable. 
But most fall short of the best. They are intent 
upon money or enjoyment. See the hard, empty, 
vacant, brutalized faces. They fall below the stand- 
ard of humanity ; why put in the claim of divinity 
for them? 

Then call to mind the teeming myriads of narrow- 
skulled savages who dwell in the dark places of the 
earth. Call you these gods? Can you fairly call 



THE FAMILY RECORD. 11 

them men? So low are they, so little above the 
beast of the field, some of them only yet struggling 
up out of their original clay into the semblance of man ! 
Why claim for all these to share the nature of God ? 

I reply : Christianity does claim for them just that 
descent, and in this claim is the secret of her triumph. 

But it must be borne in mind that they are children 
in all stages of development. If the womb of time 
be torn rudely open, its embryotic children will seem 
monstrosities of course. Even when they are brought 
to the birth some are deformed and misshapen. But 
can deformity beat off a mother's love from the off- 
spring in which runs her blood ? Will she not nour- 
ish it, rear it to symmetry within the limitations which 
its nature sets, taking for the task all the time and 
all the means available ? 

Will moral deformity or mere helplessness beat off 
the love of God ? And who will say through what 
stretches of time and upon what successive stages 
God will develop his children " into the measure and 
the stature of a perfect man"? 

One thing Christianity has already made practi- 
cally evident, that is, that belief in man and belief 
in God are bound up together. They stand or fall 
together. The revelation of Jesus Christ the Son of 
man concerning the intrinsic nature of His brethren 
has not been forgotten or ineffective. Even a false 
and unworthy "theology," though it has obscured, 
has not been able to hide it. It is the motive force 
which is slowly shaping the fortunes of the race. 

" Beloved, now are we the sons of God ! " 



II. 

THE ALL-FATHER. 



II. 

THE ALL-FATHER. 

Safjn WEB. 9. 

" ?§e tftat fjatfj seen me fjatfj seen tfje JFatfjer." 

When" the gloomy Teuton, our ancestor, walked 
or sat under the shadows of the German forest, saw 
its giant branches torn and whirled by the winds, 
heard the cruel gray North Sea roaring against the 
shore, heard the ice cracking in the silent nights of 
winter, he personified all these agencies and called 
them Thor the "Thunderer." God, to him, was 
hard, resistless, bowelless Might ! 

The Hindoo, dwelling for ages in the midst of 
tropical luxuriance, where the fecund earth riots in 
growth, where life is prodigal, where tree and plant, 
and bird and beast, bring forth so abundantly that their 
children choke and smother one another, personifies 
the vital force everywhere at work, and with obscene 
symbols worships Venus Genetrix. 

The Egyptians, after centuries of nature worship 
and nature study, abandon the problem, and perpet- 
uate their despair in the Sphinx. 

And so one may call the roll of all the peoples. 
There have been none of them who did not "seek 
after God if haply they might find Him." They all 

15 



16 SONS OF GOD. 

did find something. Each saw God in the greatest 
thing he knew. Men's eyes had slowly to be trained 
before they could see. God revealed himself to them 
as fast as they were able to comprehend. But their 
advance in Divine knowledge was never at a uni- 
form rate of progress. From time to time great 
strides were made, at each of which men paused, 
sometimes for ages. 

In the Holy Scriptures is contained the record of 
God's successive manifestations, and of the effect 
of these manifestations upon the lives and conduct 
of those to whom they came. " God, who, at sundry 
times and in divers manners, spake by the prophets, 
hath, in these last days, spoken unto us by His Son." 

I wish you to examine with some care the thought 
of God, as that thought lay in the minds of three typ- 
ical men. They are representatives of three great 
stages of religious progress. One is from the Patri- 
archal, one from the Hebrew, and one from the Chris- 
tian world. They are Job, Solomon, and Paul. It 
will be seen that each is truer than the one which 
went before, and also that each hands on his ideas to 
his own successor who incorporates them into the 
substance of his own faith. The deep truth of Jesus' 
declaration is vindicated, that He " came not to de- 
stroy, but to fulfil the Law and the Prophets." It is 
probable that every Christian runs through in his 
own experience the antecedent religious history of 
his race; just as every man, in embryo, passes 
through the types of the lower forms of animal life. 
Even when mature, there are still to be found fea- 



THE ALL-FATHER. 17 

tures in his body, and habits in his mind, whose func- 
tion is obscure, but whose history is plain : they are 
survivals from a forgotten past. 

So in the Christianity of to-day, there are still ex- 
tant the great features impressed upon the race ages 
and ages ago. Indeed, men often fancy they are 
living " according to Christ," when, in point of fact, 
they are dominated by the thought of God which 
belonged to the patriarchs or to the Hebrew Com- 
monwealth. 

(1.) Job, the man of Uz. The drama is an un- 
folding of the thesis that God is Justice. It is the 
religion of the unfortunate. It is true to the facts of 
human life. It is not the man who has been stripped 
bare and lies in ashes who curses God and defies 
Him. On the contrary, this is the one who cannot 
afford to lose his faith in equal dealing of the 
Almighty. If the man who has not yet received his 
good things abandons his faith in an ultimate fair dis- 
tribution, he abandons everything. This life he has 
already lost ; by so much the more does he hold fast 
to the hope that he will receive them in some other. 

Job is a great, rich, benign, courteous, Eastern 
Sheikh. His noble sons and gracious daughters are 
worthy children of a worthy sire. In the gate of 
the city he is known as the leading nobleman of the 
Empire. His wealth is past count. He lives gener- 
ously, cares for the poor, fears God, and loves right- 
eousness. No nobler or more attractive character is 
drawn in any literature. 

But out of a clear sky the lightning of misfortune 



18 SONS OF GOD. 

strikes him, blow upon blow. His flocks and herds 
are swept away. His sons and daughters are dead. 
His wealth follows. He becomes suspected of secret 
crime which has called upon him the vengeance of 
the Almighty. His friends abandon him. He falls 
sick of a loathsome ailment ; Last, and worst of all, 
the woman's love upon which he had leaned fails him 
at his need. His wife turns upon him in disgust, and 
calls him a fool. He has drained the cup of misery 
to its last drop. No dramatist has ever left a more 
vivid impression of a man's utter desolation than in 
this divine poem. But literary form is not the 
author's object. He proposes the question which so 
many have tried to answer Why does God mete 
out misery to any man ? 

His three friends sit down by him, and weary him 
with the shallow religionism not yet dead. Misfor- 
tunes are " judgments," they say. "It is true," they 
confess, " that in this case the offence has been well 
concealed. You have figured as an upright man ; 
but God can see through all that. Your attempt to 
still hide the fault only makes the matter worse. 
Come, make a clean breast of it. Undo the evil, 
whatever it may be, and then God will take his 
corrective hand off you." 

They made the common mistake that God pays 
moral awards in material coin. 

But Job holds fast to his own honesty. "I cannot 
tell why God has done this thing to me. That it is 
for any grievous sin I deny. Of course I know that 
I have, like every other man, failed to do the perfect 



THE ALL-FATHER. 19 

right ; but I have no crime to charge myself with, as 
you suppose. God does what is right. Even though 
he slay me I will still hold to that. To let that slip 
would make existence meaningless, and would leave 
me, to all practical purposes, mad ! I will wait. 
Some day my vindicator will appear. I have faith 
that the right will be shown before I die. But I will 
not be false to myself, even to please God ! " 

Here the argument ends. The dramatist becomes 
historian, and records that Job's judgment concern- 
ing God was vindicated by the result. For he re- 
covered from his sickness. His wife came back to 
him with double love. Other sons as noble, and other 
daughters more fair than, the lost were given to him. 
Larger wealth and more exalted honor than before 
became his fortune. And so the drama ends. It 
exploits that conception of God which is the comfort 
of all wretched folk. They cling to the belief that 
the happiness which they have so far missed is guar- 
anteed to them ultimately by the very nature of God, 
for " Grod is Justice." 

(2.) Solomon the Magnificent. 

The Hebrew king is the type of the fortunate man. 
His is probably the most conspicuous example of 
absolute good fortune on record. Try to reproduce 
him and his times before your imagination. Imagine 
a man in the vigor of mature manhood. His manly 
beauty is the wonder of his time. His health is abso- 
lute. He is endowed with understanding beyond 
any other. He is a poet, a man of science, a soldier, a 
statesman, a philosopher, a king, and in every charac- 



20 SONS OF GOD. 

ter is pre-eminent. He sets before himself the task to 
test the possibilities of human life. If it be possible 
for any man to suck happiness out of it Solomon can. 
He deliberately makes the experiment with his eyes 
open, noting the observed facts as he goes. First he 
tries Philosophy. He has all the sciences at his 
fingers' ends. The " Systems " are as familiar to him 
as is his nurse's speech. He learns all there is to 
know, and declares there is nothing in it. He flings 
it all away, and tries what can be found of pleasure 
through the senses. Not the gross gratifications 
which, everybody knows, defeat themselves, but the 
well considered pleasures of a philosophic voluptuary. 
He denied himself nothing, — gorgeous residence, 
dress, service, music, art, entertainment, the fair mis- 
tress whom he adored, and the thousand wives and 
concubines who adored him; the enthusiastic affec- 
tion of his people and the admiration of his contem- 
porary kings. Again he declares that there is noth- 
ing in it. And he says why. It is because God has 
ordained certain laws of living which a man can no 
more escape from than he can from his own shadow. 
Every attempt to violate or ignore any one of them 
is quietly but relentlessly met and punished. The 
wise thing to do is to find out as completely as one 
can what these laws are, and mind them. If he 
transgress, either through ignorance or foolhardiness, 
it is but a word and a blow, — and more often the 
blow without a word. 

"This is the substance of the whole matter: fear 
God and keep his commandments." The final word 
of Solomon is that " God is Law." 



THE ALL-FATHER. 21 

(3.) Paul, " the slave of Jesus Christ." 

All will allow that this was an extraordinary man. 
But, unlike Job and Solomon, the things which made 
him remarkable are to be looked for not in his sur- 
roundings but in himself. There was nothing excep- 
tional in his outward life. He was like ten thousand 
other men. He was a scholar, a gentleman, a man 
of comfortable fortune, of position and character, but 
had nothing about him to attract the attention of 
even his fellow-townsmen. 

But his inner life was most tumultuous. His soul 
was the arena in which was fought out that struggle 
between the god and the beast of which every man 
is compounded. His " Confessions " in the seventh 
chapter of his epistle to the Romans has held the 
glass up to millions. From this intolerable conflict 
he found relief through the aid of the Divine Man in 
whom he saw the significance of life and the nature 
of God. Then he emerged into the serene content 
of a son of God. He found the solution of the 
problem of existence in the truth that " Grod is 
Lover 

You must see how the domination of one or other 
of these three notions about God must affect a man's 
living. In point of fact they are all three actively 
working to-day. 

All about us whole classes of men are in rebellion 
against the existing conditions of life, and appealing 
clamorously for a "justice" which they think has 
been wrongfully denied them. They are poor, and 
they think their poverty a punishment for an offence 



22 SONS OF GOD. 

which they have never committed. Why should they 
live meagrely and stinted while their neighbor, no 
better man than they, lives in luxury. Lazarus in 
his rags and sores, like Job on his garbage-heap with 
his boils, asks God " Why ? " They misread, or but 
partially read, the facts of life, as Job did. They 
fancy that God makes up his balances yearly. If a 
practical equity of distribution fails to reach them in 
a lifetime, they conclude that either God or man is 
at fault. God, they think it cannot be ; and so they 
clamor for a human adjustment which will, by laws 
and governments, bring in the equity which God's 
justice warrants, and man's injustice thwarts. I wish 
it might be done ! Surely it is not pleasant to think 
of pain and poverty as being perennial. Who would 
not vote for any act of legislature or any economic 
system which would cure them, — if only it could 
be ? But the whole thought of God and life out of 
which such dreams come is shallow, mechanical, 
of the world's childhood. It would settle the per- 
plexities of life by changing conditions instead of 
by changing characters. If men were automata, if 
they were beasts, this way would be practicable. 
But the disturbing element in this mechanical equa- 
tion is the incalculable quantity of men's wills. 
These can never be reached, changed, controlled, 
moved, or restrained by justice. Only to love will 
they respond. 

But not more true, and much less noble, is the 
cold-hearted acquiescence in " law " which marks 
the smug, comfortable man of fortune, or man of 



THE ALL-FATHER. 23 

science. The one sees in God an infinite policeman, 
to preserve the established order of things. The sin- 
fulness of crime seems to him to rest in its tendency 
to disorder. The student finds himself in the pres- 
ence of a formless, impassive force, which does not 
hesitate to break up and throw upon the ground a 
thousand generations of unnoted men that they may 
form the soil out of which a future generation of 
better things may grow. I doubt if any more horri- 
ble conception of existence will ever be reached than 
that of the " Reign of Law." In the presence of an 
infinite justice one may plead and hope. In the 
presence of law, one will " eat, and drink, and die," 
— if possible, childless ! 

The infinite relief which Jesus brings to the situa- 
tion is this, — one sees in Him the eternally true 
relation which exists between God and men. They 
are father and sons. They show the same nature and 
the same destiny. What derangements exist are in 
the estranged affections. What is possible is to be 
sought here. The Christian is the only man who is 
true to the facts. He only is " scientific." He does 
"fear God;" but he knows that he cannot "keep 
His commandments." In sober truth, he is not much 
concerned about commandments. He asks, not 
"What am I to do?" but "What am I?" He 
knows that if he can settle truthfully his eternal 
relationships his conduct will take care of itself. 
Keenly and painfully alive as he is to the fact of his 
" brute inheritance," he is as deeply conscious that 
he has also descended through another line. This 



24 SONS OF GOD. 

is the one he tries to re-establish. Slowly, as he does 
so, he comes into the secret of God. The perplexi- 
ties of life clear up, and the burdens of it become 
light. As he comes more and more to know his 
Father, he comes more and more to recognize and care 
for his brethren. He would reform the world by lead- 
ing his brothers, one by one, back to their Father. 
He comes to see that the most imperious force in the 
universe is the same one which laughs at all obstacles 
when it shows itself in the lives of men and women, 
— that is love. He opens his heart to his Father, 
and walks serenely. 

" Strong Son of God, immortal love, 
Whom we that have not seen thy face, 
By faith and faith alone embrace, 
Believing where we cannot prove, 
Thou wilt not leave us in the dust." 



HI. 
THE CHURCH THE BODY OF CHRIST. 



III. 



THE CHUKCH THE BODY OF CHEIST. 

lEpfj. u 23. 

" Wtyz (Efjutcfj is fjts iotog, tJje fulness of Jjim tfjat filUtfj all 
in all." 

No one doubts that Jesus intended to be a perma- 
nent force in the world. It was clearly no tempo- 
rary ascendency which He had in mind. His was not 
the temper of what the Scotch call the " maisterful 
man." That sort of men are always in the world. 
" Born leaders " men call them. They dominate 
those with whom they come in contact. They seem 
to have more dynamic potency than their fellows. 
These go down before the glance of the eye or the 
tone of voice of such a man. 

But these masterful souls are not those whose in- 
fluence upon the race is permanent. Their effect is 
intense rather than extensive. Their influence usu- 
ally ends with their lives. For a little while their 
names are remembered as prodigies, and then they 
fade out of memory. Jesus cannot be classed among 
great leaders. That He was not : He was something 
more. The work which He proposed to Himself was 
to be a constant work. It was to be least at its 
beginning, but to grow through the ages. It was a 

27 



28 SONS OF GOD. 

" kingdom " to be built up slowly, out of discordant 
materials, brought from many places at many times, 
by many hands ; but its design was clear in His mind, 
and shows no trace of misgiving about the issue. 
He warns His friends in whose hands He placed His 
working-plans, against impatience and against despair; 
but He looks for triumph so confidently that He con- 
fuses His tenses, and says, "I have overcome the 
world." He deems Himself to be more secure and 
abiding than the most stable things, and declares that 
"heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word 
shall not pass away." In a word, none can read the 
Gospels without being struck with the serene confi- 
dence of perpetuity which filled His mind. 

Again: no reader of human history will care to 
deny that this confidence of His has been in some 
sense vindicated by the subsequent facts. Who is as 
well known in the world, at this moment, as Jesus 
Christ ? About whom do men think and speak and 
read as much as they do about him ? Whose life has 
been so exhaustively studied? Whose words have 
engaged and held the attention of men in a way at 
all approaching His? The dominant races of the 
earth count the years from His coming. They deem 
that the most important event in history. The one 
word which groups and unifies the progressive races 
is " Christendom." In some mysterious way He has 
constrained history, and bent the current of move- 
ment. It is true that other men have done the same, 
in a measure. But His influence has been so incom- 
parably greater in degree than that of any other, that 



THE CHURCH THE BODY OF CHRIST. 29 

a strong presumption is established that it must be 
different in kind. It differs from that of any man in 
this, that it constantly increases in potency, while 
that of theirs constantly diminishes. The influence 
of a great man upon his race is like a projectile fired 
from a gun. Its initial velocity is its greatest. The 
farther it travels the less its energy becomes, until it 
is spent and falls. The influence of Jesus has moved 
through the centuries like a missile whose energy is 
in itself. Its speed and potency have steadily in- 
creased. Compare His course with that of John the 
Baptist. " I must decrease, but He must increase," 
said the greatest of all the men born of women. He 
was indeed great, " but the least in the kingdom of 
heaven is greater than He," because in that kingdom 
inheres a new and greater kind of energy, which 
every member of it shares. 

The effect which He has produced is usually spoken 
of as done by the " spirit of Christianity." This is 
in harmony with the language He Himself held. But 
He spoke of His " Spirit " not as that diffused ten- 
dency which we call by such a name, but as a self- 
conscious, though protean, person. How does the 
spirit of Christianity operate ? 

I reply, it follows the analogy of all spirit, and 
operates through and by a body. One cannot con- 
ceive of spirit operating any other way. The spirit 
precedes the body, forms it, and expresses itself by 
it. Let us draw out this idea more in detail, so as to 
get it fairly before our minds. 

What is a man but a soul which is constantly 



30 SONS OF GOD. 

clothing itself and expressing itself in matter ? Its 
garment is ever disintegrating and being renewed. 
Particle after particle falls away, and is replaced by 
other like particles. The "form" lies under the 
stream of atoms which flow over it, as the form of 
the river's bed gives shape to the water above it. 
The spirit speaks through the body. If the vehicle 
be sane and vigorous, the message is clear and whole : 
if it be faulty or marred, the message is incomplete 
or broken. If the body be broken, the spirit remains 
silent and flits away. 

Examine also such a phrase as, for example, the 
"spirit of political freedom." There is such a thing. 
No word so well describes the thing as the word 
" spirit." It is like the wind ; one cannot tell from 
where it emerges, or to where it vanishes, but it can 
be clearly seen, sometimes in fitful zephyrs fanning 
the hot cheek of the slave, and again sweeping like 
a cyclone amidst the debris of empires. But it can- 
not subsist disembodied. The political history of the 
last thousand years is simply the record of the at- 
tempts of this spirit to clothe itself in form. It 
emerges from its secret home in the forest, and finds 
expression in the clumsy folk-laws of the Saxons. It 
gathers about it slowly the body of the English Con- 
stitution. It finds its thus-far fittest expression in 
American institutions. But the thing to be noticed 
is, that it has always wrought through and by some 
organized body. At every stage it has dropped some- 
thing, and taken on something new. It has con- 
stantly re-incarnated itself. Thus the spirit has 



THE CHURCH THE BODY OF CHRIST. 31 

always found a body, and the body has always pro- 
tected the spirit. The spirit of political liberty will 
not remain for long alive as an inspiration, a memory, 
or a hope: there must be some place among men 
where it dwells bodily. 

But there is a strange notion current that the spirit 
of Jesus Christ may subsist indefinitely as a blessed 
Ghost; indeed, not only that it may do so, but that 
it must. The idea of organization as being necessary 
to the life of Christianity is deeply resented by many. 
The strange paradox exists of great religious organi- 
zations whose organizing principle is that organization 
is of no consequence. Probably the popular notion 
of Christianity diffused in Protestant communities is 
this : It thinks of Christianity as a spirit, — a spirit 
working sensibly in individual souls, a spirit moving 
in the mass of society. It is jealous of every offer to 
claim for this spirit an organized body. Such people 
seriously believe that the less body of organization a 
spirit can have, the better ; that the ideal would be 
a state of humanity wherein every individual soul 
would be touched independently by the spirit of 
Christ. This is not to be wondered at. The notion 
arose at a time when " Christ's body " was so con- 
stricted and paralyzed that it could not speak as the 
Holy Ghost moved it, but mumbled incoherent or 
blasphemous words. But then, because the spirit of 
a man speaks but poorly through a diseased body, 
shall we say that the spirit of man will manifest 
itself without a body at all? Or shall we think the 
same way about the spirit of Christ ? 



32 SONS OF GOD. 

Suppose the first generation of Christians had thus 
conceived of the Church, what peril and pain they 
would have been saved ! For, remember, martyrdom 
came to them in cruel form, not for following Christ's 
precepts, or for being filled with His spirit, but for 
membership in an illicit organization. Had the early 
Christians at Antioch or Lyons, or even at Jerusalem, 
thought of Christianity as many people now do, they 
would certainly not have acted as they did. Suppose 
some modern " Evangelist " had been their adviser, 
what practical form would his advice have taken? 
Would he not have been constrained to say then as 
now, that " Church-membership is not essential to 
salvation; the sacraments are not necessary in the 
sense that he who misses them shall miss of heaven ; 
the chief and only essential thing is that a man 
should consciously receive the spirit of Christ into 
his own spirit, and allow that spirit to bring forth its 
legitimate fruit of righteousness of life." But sup- 
pose the disciples had accepted that to be an adequate 
statement of the case, their action would certainly 
have been different from what it was. Why should 
they have jeopardized their lives and estates to do 
things which, on the theory of the " Evangelist/' 
were not necessary, and not even of any great con- 
sequence ? For, notice, persecution seized upon them, 
not because they became conspicuous for purity, 
honesty, charity, gentleness, meekness, goodness. 
There has never been a society which would have 
become exasperated at the exhibition of these quali- 
ties in individuals as the Roman world did at the 



THE CHURCH THE BODY OF CHRIST. 33 

Christians. That anger was aroused by the deliberate 
attempt to introduce a new and antagonistic kingdom. 
It was the projection three centuries forward of the 
same offence which brought Jesus to the cross. The 
renunciation of His plan of a kingdom would have 
saved Him at Jerusalem. Abandonment of church- 
membership would have saved His followers at Rome. 
They were burned and crucified because "they 
assembled themselves together." If they had be- 
lieved it to be lawful, how easy it would have been 
to pass on from mouth to ear the gracious words of 
Christ ; for individuals to keep His gracious spirit in 
loving memory, to conform themselves quietly to His 
precepts without attracting dangerous attention to 
themselves by organization. And why should they 
have banded themselves together into a body if 
membership in a body be not of imperious necessity ? 
And if they had followed that theory, every sane 
man can see, that Christianity would have been dead 
and forgotten fifteen hundred years ago ! 

Here we come to see the ground and reason of 
Christ's stern exaction that every follower of his 
must declare himself. " Him that will confess me 
before men I also will confess ; him that will deny 
me before men, before men I also will deny." This 
clearly demands a voluntary and positive declaration ; 
not simply the negative and inevitable declaration 
which a Christian makes of himself by his conduct. 
But why ? Why should public confession be de- 
manded of me when it is, in the nature of the case, 
not essential to my salvation ? I reply : the obliga- 



34 SONS OF GOD. 

tion does not arise out of the need of the confessor, 
but out of the needs of Christ. If it concerned 
only myself, I might forego at once the advantages 
and the duty. But it concerns Christ. This is the 
means by which he intends to be kept alive in the 
world. The body to be formed thus out of His 
individual followers is the place where His spirit is to 
dwell. Refusal on the part of an individual to take 
his place in it is treason ; and treason in any king- 
dom is a capital offence. 

I think the real difficulty in the minds of many is 
a different one. They find it difficult to believe that 
the spirit of Christ either needs a specific body, or 
that it will, in fact, confine its operations to the 
members of such a body. They ask, " Is the Church 
identical with the body of Christ ? " The facts of life, 
which every one can see, make it difficult to assert this. 
If there were a sharp distinction between the " Church " 
and the "world," the perplexity would be solved. 
But there is not. Any definition of the Church which 
would satisfy even the strongest Churchman, would 
still leave outside of it a broad margin of individuals 
who are clearly more or less under the domination of 
the spirit of Christ. It is urged even, " Why try to 
maintain the Church idea when the exigencies of life 
do not require it? Here are a thousand institutions 
now existent among men which have established 
their necessity, — law, government, commerce, science, 
art, learning, — why not try to infuse all these with 
the spirit of Christ? When that shall be done the 
problem will be solved. The world will be redeemed. 



THE CHURCH THE BODY OF CHRIST. 35 

The spirit will no longer be compelled to brood over 
chaos, but will sing in an harmonious universe ? " 

To this I answer: The notion arises out of a 
confusion in thought. Take, for example, the insti- 
tution of civil government. It is perfectly true that 
if every individual citizen were filled and moved by 
the spirit of Christ, the State would be Christian. 
But government, law, would be neither more nor 
less Christian than they were before ; for these are 
things of which not even moral qualities can be 
predicated. Laws are simply lifeless tools by which 
living creatures express and execute their wills. No 
spirit, either good or bad, can dwell in them, any 
more than the spirit of man can dwell in a manikin 
of springs and steel. The same is true of every one 
of the " institutions " named. They are lifeless 
things. But the " Spirit is life," and can only abide 
in a body suitable for it. The actual experience of 
the attempt to bring in the spirit of God by reform- 
ing institutions, has not been encouraging. It is 
amazing that wise and good men and women should 
look to it as they do. The Church of Jesus Christ 
has always been the reforming agency of the world. 
It was meant to be. It was established primarily for 
that end. It has preserved in the holy place of its 
temple the standard of moral measurement which the 
world has always accepted. The things which it has 
banned, the world has banned ; the things which it 
has loosed, the world has received. 

But this fact, that the Church is the body of which 
Christ is the soul, forces some very serious considera- 



36 SONS OF GOD. 

tions upon its members. I will ask you to weigh 
only two of them. 

The first is, that law of growth by which a principle 
of life attracts to itself, and uses only such matter as 
can be assimilated. God giveth to every seed his 
own body ; that is, the body which is able to con- 
serve and express the life of the seed. Every life 
selects unerringly from the earth's mass such atoms 
as are fit ; the rest it rejects. If by chance a strange 
one find itself entangled in the organism, it irritates ; 
and if the life be strong enough, it is cast off. So 
the spirit of Christ moves among the mass of men. 
It tests them. It selects and rejects. It moves with 
a fan in its hand. It winnows the human atoms, and 
builds its heap finally of those who can endure. 

The second is the awful disaster of schism in the 
body. Church unity is dismissed by many sober- 
minded men as an impracticable dream. It may, con- 
ceivably, be so ; but do they perceive the alternative ? 
It is true that each body hath many members, — eyes, 
hands, feet, — and that no one can say to another, " I 
have no need of thee." But do they see that all the 
members may still remain attached to the body, and 
yet the body be smitten with an awful disease? 
There is a dreadful affection of the brain, which 
produces what the physicians call " loss of co-ordina- 
tion." It is a pitiable sight. There is no visible 
lesion ; but the owner's two hands or two feet, or 
hands and feet, refuse to act in concert. Each moves 
independently of the other. The man is as good as 
dead. Does this not express the helpless condition 



THE CHURCH THE BODY OF CHRIST. 37 

of a divided Christendom? Co-ordination has been 
lost. The Church can neither run nor speak. She 
can yet think and pray. Let her pray for unity that 
she may be kept alive. 

The amazing vitality of the spirit which animates 
it is manifest in the faults and weaknesses of the 
Church, as in her strength and triumphs. The hope 
and pledge of her abiding life and vigor are in the 
changeless soul which dwells within her. For " the 
Church is His Body ; the fulness of Him that filleth 
all in all." 



IV. 
JESUS' WORKING THEORY OF LIFE. 



IV. 

JESUS' WORKING THEORY OF LIFE. 

MO.B.5-9. 

" ILet tfjis mttttr be in sou, fofjicb foas also tit (JHjrist f esus : 
rajjo, being in tfje form of <§otr, tfjougfjt it not robberg to be equal 
foitij ^BroJj : 13ut matte fjimseif of no reputation, antt took upon fjim 
tfje form of a servant, antt foas matte in tlje likeness of men : &ntt 
being fountt in fashion as a man, fje Jjumblett fjimseif, antt became 
obettient unto tteatb, efcen tfje tteatfj of tfje cross. OTfjerefore (Koto 
also batJj Jjififjlg exaitett fjim, antt gtben fjim a name fofjicfj is abobe 
eberg name." 

The student of " Comparative Religion " can 
make very little out of Christianity. It will not 
yield up its contents to his tests. He tries to place 
it side by side with the other 'isms, but its personality 
is so unique that his comparisons are of very little 
value. The truth is, it is not a "religion" at all. 
The things which are prominent in other cults are 
conspicuously absent from it. It concerns itself 
hardly at all with the origin of man, for example, or 
with the origin of the universe, or with the mode and 
manner of future existence. It has little to say of 
the internal economy of the Godhead. To be sure, 
the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is clearly dedu- 
cible from it, but it is not formally stated (save in 
one spurious passage), and does not occupy much 
space anywhere. 

41 



42 SONS OF GOD. 

What it essentially is, is a Working Theory of Life. 
It takes the facts of existence as they involve and 
concern men, sets them in their true relationships, 
uncovers their significance, and brings the man who 
comes to see them truly into a new and hopeful tem- 
per. Jesus seems to say to those who heed him some- 
thing like this : — 

" Brothers, listen to me ; every human life is, 
whether he knows it or not, under the management 
of a father. It is to be passed among brothers. 
These are the facts ; and while you may ignore them 
or mistake them, they are still the facts. Now, if 
you will recognize these facts, and act accordingly, 
you will be blessed and you will bless ; if you do not 
see them, or do not believe them, you will be miser- 
able, of course. In Me you see the Father. Many 
who look at Me do not see the Father, but you who 
do see it are let into the secret of existence. You 
must treat your brothers brotherly. They will not 
understand you, and will not thank you. So be it. 
Trust to the facts, and all will come right. Your 
brother may over-reach you, may curse you, may slay 
you. Let it be so. You are still the winner. Do 
not retaliate. If you want to bind him into help- 
lessness, throw around him the meshes of your love. 
True, he may break out of them and smite you, but 
even so, not a hair of your head shall be wasted. In 
the end you will win. One, with God, is a majority." 

He calls attention to Himself as the supreme ex- 
ample of this method. He had renounced the rights 
and immunities which belonged to Him as God, and 



JESUS 1 WORKING THEORY OF LIFE. 43 

deliberately embraced the career of a man. He fol- 
lowed the career to the end. He claimed no exemp- 
tions, not even from temptation, from death, or from 
hell. He passed through every experience possible 
to a man, and the whole career was just the parts of 
the One Great Renunciation ! 

St. Paul seizes upon this, the central feature of 
Jesus, and challenges every man to become " of the 
same mind which was also in Christ." He urges this 
upon the ground that in the case of Jesus it was 
magnificently successful. The central spirit of Chris- 
tianity is then the renunciation of rights. That is, 
one finds success by renouncing ambition. He finds 
safety by declining to fight for it. He finds wealth 
by spending, peace by going about unarmed, life by 
losing it. 

Now, to practical men, all this seems the very 
extremity of wrong-headedness. It is a set of para- 
doxes which do well enough for a sermon, but which 
are really not to be considered in practical conduct. 
It is an ideal which will do to dream about, but in a 
world constituted as this one is, it simply " will not 
work." "Suppose," they say, "a man should really 
undertake to conduct his life upon this theory, to 
resist not evil, to sit down patiently under contempt- 
uous usage, to empty out of his life all those laud- 
able ambitions which he has set before himself as 
aims, what a pusillanimous wretch he would become ! 
He would be thrust to the wall and trampled upon, 
and would deserve to be, and more than all, he would 
do harm and not good in the world." 



44 SONS OF GOD. 

Or, to see its absurdity more clearly, imagine a 
corporation, say a railway company, to adopt this 
policy. It must not seek its own ; it must forget 
itself, and work for the interest of its rivals ; if rates 
are cut, or a parallel road is built, it must not return 
evil for evil. What would become of the share- 
holders of such a road? Would not the courts of a 
Christian government step in to remove and probably 
to imprison the managers who should adopt such a 
policy? 

Or, try it on a still more palpable scale, in the case 
of a Nation. Let such a country disband its armies, 
lay up its arms, beat its spears into ploughshares and 
its swords into pruning-hooks, and learn the art of 
war no more. If an enemy seize her territory, let 
him have it. If she is insulted abroad in the person 
of a citizen, do not avenge it. Let her burn her 
bonds and remit her taxes, — and all the rest of it. 
You see how grotesque it seems to fancy the same 
mind which was in Christ in a man, a corporation, or 
a nation. It seems to be not only impracticable, but 
dangerous. It would seem to imperil some of those 
virtues which men hold in high honor. For, in point 
of fact, many of our highest ideals emerge from the 
idea of Rights. The Magna Charta, the Petition of 
Rights, the Declaration of Independence, — what are 
all these but the solemn asseveration that men know 
their rights, and knowing, dare maintain ; that they 
not only will not, but ought not to, renounce them. 
Out of this springs the high, chivalric ideas which 
belong to military life, the pomp and circumstance 



JESUS 1 WORKING THEORY OF LIFE. 45 

of glorious war, the instances of bravery and self- 
devotion which shine out of the stained pages of 
history. Is it not indeed true that such considera- 
tions as these have restrained the mass of men from 
taking up the cross ? It is not so much shrinking 
from the pain of the cross which deters. That could 
be borne. But it is the stubborn belief that it would 
be useless, and a lurking suspicion that it would in 
the end be hurtful. One could lose his right eye 
or right hand to win eternal blessedness ; but to lose 
the dear member, and then find that the sacrifice had 
been thrown away ! To maim one's self, and then 
fail of entrance into life ; there's the rub. 

Now, I have tried to state the practical and theo- 
retical difficulties in the way of a Christian life with- 
out reserve, and as they do actually lie in the minds 
of many honest men with whom I have talked about 
these things. I do not think it worth while to say 
to such men, " Here is a manner of life laid down by 
Jesus : you must take it on faith ; that is, you must 
shut your eyes to all its probable consequences, and 
obey like a little child." The fallacy of this exhorta- 
tion becomes evident as soon as one examines it. Of 
course this challenge to obedience does not become 
of obligation upon any individual until such a 
person is satisfied that it comes from One who has 
the right to command. But the nature of Him who 
issues the order is largely to be determined by the 
nature of the order itself. Some men have satisfied 
themselves upon this point, and so are the " followers 
of Christ." Others are trying to satisfy themselves 



46 SONS OF GOD. 

upon the same point : and they also are followers of 
Christ, only less far along. I fancy this to be the 
attitude of thousands. They are strangely attracted 
by the person and spirit of Jesus ; but they hesitate 
to commit themselves unreservedly to his principle of 
living on account of its seeming impracticability. 
Before such, — and are we not all such ? — I want to 
lay a few considerations. 

(1.) I ask your candid attention to the overwhelming 
successfulness of Jesus' own career. Who thinks of 
His life as a failure ? as wasted or thrown away ? or 
as lived in such a way as to miss of the best conceiv- 
able ? Dismissing for the moment all thought of His 
divinity, was there ever a more successful life than 
that of Jesus the Nazarene ? In its main outlines 
it is perfectly familiar to more than half the world. 
They know the poverty, the humiliation, the death, 
which overtook Him. But they know also that He 
possessed a serene self-content which made Him 
invulnerable. They see the strange moral domina- 
tion which He exercised over all who came at all to 
understand Him. When we see Him and Pilate 
standing face to face, — Pilate the self-seeker, who 
subordinated everything else to his own aggrandize- 
ment, and Jesus, who would not so much as open His 
lips to save His life, — which of the two does one 
instinctively prefer ? Here the two theories of life 
are violently contrasted. Pilate looks to himself, is 
alert, adroit, his trained senses and understanding 
keen to detect danger, and unhesitating either to 
parry or to strike, as occasion may advise. Jesus 



JESUS' WORKING THEORY OF LIFE. 47 

has no thought of Himself at all, but without the 
smallest tremor commits His destiny to His Father. 
Look at them closely. Which of them will you 
point to and say, " Behold a man " ? The judg- 
ment of the world has been given upon both the 
man and the principle. 

Is it not a strange fact, that in the face of " the 
practical common sense " of humanity, Jesus, and His 
faint shadow the Buddha, divide the homage of three- 
fourths the human race ? The great renunciation of 
Him who " thought it not robbery to be equal with 
God," and the little renunciation of the Indian prince 
under the bo-tree have touched the heart of Chris- 
tendom, and the imagination of Heathendom. Can 
it be that a principle so practically potent does not 
rest upon eternal verity, or can be unsafe to follow ? 

(2.) Weigh the experience of men, — that the 
things most to be desired in life are not attainable 
when striven for as rights. The great joys of living, 
the real blessings of existence, come not that way. 
Any one can test it for himself, or observe it in a hun- 
dred examples. A man says : " I will act with open 
eyes and calm judgment. I will not be guided by 
sentiment. I will look fairly at the situation in 
which I live, and will care for myself. 

' As I walked by myself 
I talked to myself, 

And thus myself did say to me : 
" Look to thyself, and take care of thyself, 

For nobody cares for thee." ' 

" I will do justice as far as is in my power ; but I 
will also exact justice from my fellows. I will follow 



48 SONS OF GOD. 

Polonius' counsel and beware of entrance to a quarrel, 
but being in, will so bear myself that my enemy 
shall beware of me. I will owe no man anything, 
and I will see to it that no man shall owe me anything 
uncollected.'' 

Now, what will such a man be able to secure for 
himself? At the very most, he shall dwell in a 
palace, dress luxuriously, fare sumptuously, and buy 
such toys as he fancies will amuse him. But the code 
which he adopts, with what he fancies so much sa- 
gacity, will be impotent to secure him the devotion 
of a woman, the friendship of a man, or the love of a 
child ! No doubt he will actually possess all of these 
to a degree ; but if he look closely he will see that 
they have all come to him, not because he has adhered 
to the plan of living which he has announced, but 
because he has at times broken away from it, and 
allowed himself to be led by the " mind " of Christ. 
He may possess some of these, and the like blessings, 
I say. But again he may not; for it is the pecu- 
liarity of this kind of man to think that love may be 
bought or compelled. Who has not watched the 
wretchedness of a man, for example, living year after 
year unloved in the presence of a wife whose heart is 
filled to bursting with an affection which he cannot 
touch. He thinks it ought to be his by right. He 
owns it. He has bought, or he has contracted for, it 
in an open and fair bargain. But he cannot possess 
it. He gnaws his own heart in impotent disappoint- 
ment, because he cannot bring himself to ask as a 
gift that which he thinks ought to be his as a right. 



JESUS' WORKING THEORY OF LIFE. 49 

A tender word of solicitation would open upon him- 
self the very flood-gates of a woman's love ; — but he 
has learned to live by the rule of rights, and cannot 
understand the "mind of Christ" which alone can 
compel the benedictions of life for lack of which he 
is starving. Indeed, there can be no more patent 
illustration of the potency of Jesus' rule of living,, 
than the strange place which woman holds in Chris- 
tendom. They were the first to comprehend Him 
and to make His spirit theirs. They have always been 
drawn to Him, as men have not. They have found 
the strange strength of weakness, the rich life which 
comes by losing one's life. Pity it is that they 
should ever be misled to exchange the power of 
Love, which has the promise of the future, for Right, 
whose sway is doomed ! 

(3.) Institutions which rest upon force are short- 
lived. This is true, though the quality of force may 
be disguised, even though it masquerade as neces- 
sity or even beneficence. Men of violence have tried 
again and again to seize and control the world's life. 
They have always failed. They always must, even 
though the tyranny be that of " the people " instead 
of the ruler. Governments of might have chased 
each other like the breakers chasing one another up 
the beach. Their violence ruins their stability. 

Who can think that the armed truce of Europe's 
mighty empires is stable? "They that take the 
sword shall perish by the sword " is an eternal law. 
Each one must, of necessity, add force to force in the 
titanic rivalry, until the burden of the armor be- 



50 SONS OF GOD. 

comes crushing. Then it must fight for the oppor- 
tunity to disarm. When, finally, one stands supreme, 
overlooking its fallen rivals, its very attitude evokes 
new enemies, and again begins the horrible cycle. 
All see that no stable equilibrium of nations can come 
until force is eliminated, and " sentiment " takes its 
place. And what is true of nations is true of men. 
" They must overturn, and overturn, and overturn, 
till He comes whose right it is to reign." His name 
is Love. 

Just here I fancy some one saying : " Is Tolstoi 
right, then ? or the Quakers ? Is non-resistance the 
way ? Shall men and society lay down their arms, 
and abandon the machinery of government, — for is 
not government itself but consecrated force?" I 
answer: They are only half right. Half a truth 
may be practically, and for a time, worse than a con- 
sistent lie. Passivity is not the law of Christ, for it 
is contrary to the nature of life. Life is active, not 
passive. This is its distinguishing quality. Safety 
in life is not to be found by standing still. That 
attitude loses the promises both of this life and the 
life that is to come. Jesus promised His followers 
safety and blessedness while they should be actively 
seeking their fellows, — not otherwise. It is not the 
Quaker, but the Good Samaritan, who is safe from 
robbers. The one invites attack ; the other disarms 
it. It is not the cloistered nun, but the Sister of 
Mercy, who is spared by the plague. It is not he who 
allows his life to be taken, but he who deliberately 
loses it, who finds it again. 



JESUS' WORKING THEORY OF LIFE. 51 

" But, after all, is it anything more than a religious 
fancy, which will, of necessity, break down under the 
test of experiment? Can any man live that way ? " 

I answer: "Thousands have lived that way. Many 
of them have come to disaster, as we would say ; but 
when we offer them pity or counsel, we are met by a 
strange smile as of one who knows better than we. 
Those who have been broken, have not repined, but 
sung songs. We can see that their pain has made it 
easier for all who follow. 

The difficulty of Jesus' theory of life may be 
frankly acknowledged. He himself declared it. The 
way is narrow, and the gate strait. The apostle, 
with that broad-minded reasonableness which marks 
the true Christian, only exhorts his friends " as much 
as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men." But it 
seems clear to me, at any rate, that the world has 
now travelled far enough to see the goal toward 
which the path points. The ideal of life which Jesus 
brought in has been tacitly accepted as the ideal. No 
man in Christendom is altogether untouched by it. 
Says Mr. John Fiske : " To many the Sermon on 
the Mount has been as foolishness and a stumbling- 
block, and its ethics derided as too good for this 
world. But through misery that has seemed unen- 
durable, and turmoil that has seemed endless, men 
have thought on that gracious life and its sublime 
ideal, and have taken comfort in the sweetly solemn 
message of Peace on Earth to men of good will." 



V. 
PERSONAL RELIGION. 



1 






PERSONAL KELIGION. 

Col. fc — 26-27. 

M Efje mpterg fofjicfj Jjatfj been Jjifc from ages anU from genera* 
tions nofo is matie manifest to f)is saints ; to foijom <£oti fooulto make 
fcnofon tofjat is tfje ricfjes of tfje glorg of tfjis mgsterg ♦ ♦ ♦ toijtcfj is 
£Jjrist in gou tfje fjope of glorg ! " 

The word "saint" is used in the New Testament 
as synonymous with " Christian." Our popular use 
of the term is unknown there. We think of a saint 
as a Christian who has reached such a superlative 
pitch of holiness that he has become conspicuous. In 
a large section of the Church there are regular methods 
of canonizing such a person; that is, of formally 
admitting him into the roll of the "saints." St. 
Paul is always careful to speak of all Christians as 
saints. He begins by addressing a letter to " the 
saints which are " in such or such a place ; and then 
passes at once to rebuke them sharply for the very 
gravest moral faults which, he says, are common 
among them ; and ends by a loving greeting to the 
same "saints." Our common antithesis of saint and 
sinner was unknown to him. To his mind many of 
the saints were grievous sinners ; but they did not, on 
this account cease to be saints. When he wrote saint 

55 



56 SONS OF GOD. 

he meant Christian ; and when he said Christian he 
meant saint. 

But then, to his way of thinking, a Christian was 
a very remarkable sort of person. In the text he 
states briefly what such a person essentially is. He 
is one to whom the mysteries of God lie open. All 
ages and generations had stood perplexed in the pres- 
ence of great mysteries. They are such as the 
being and nature of God ; the significance of exist- 
ence; the question of a possible immortality; the 
moral value of actions; the destiny of individuals; 
the future of the race. The apostle claimed that 
Jesus Christ was the answer to all these hoary prob- 
lems ; and that there was no other answer. His own 
relation to Jesus was very peculiar. He had never 
seen Him except in a vision. Just what the nature 
of this vision was is not very clear ; but it is clear 
that he did not suppose his knowledge of Him to be 
due to the vision, for he insists that precisely the 
same certain knowledge is possible to any man. 

Now, I wish to press this, though I know that such 
insistence may be distasteful. 

St. Paul asserts that Christianity is the conscious 
personal relation of an individual soul to Jesus 
Christ. It is much beside this. It is a manner of 
living ; membership in a society ; the acceptance of a 
creed ; but before these, and after them, and along 
with them, it is an experience. It is a conscious, 
overwhelming, personal love for God as God is seen 
and known in the person of Jesus Christ. Let me 
recall to your mind a few typical passages of Scrip- 



PERSONAL RELIGION. 57 

ture which will put this beyond dispute. We will 
begin with the words of Jesus himself : — 

" Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love 
me he will keep my words ; and my Father will love 
him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode 
with him." 

11 righteous Father, the world hath not known 
thee ; but I have known thee, and these have known 
that thou hast sent me, and I have declared unto 
them thy name, and will declare it, that the love 
wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them and I 
in them." 

Then hear the words of the apostle : — 

" Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and 
that the spirit of God dwelleth in you ? " 

" Who shall separate us from the love of Christ ? 
Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or fam- 
ine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword ? As it is writ- 
ten, For thy sake we are killed all the day long ; we 
are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all 
these things we are more than conquerors through 
him that loved us. For I am persuaded that neither 
death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor 
powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor 
height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be 
able to separate us from the love of God which is in 
Christ Jesus our Lord." 

Again : During the whole course of Christendom 
individuals have borne their testimony to this same 
religious experience. They have believed in Christ, 
not so much because such conviction was reasonable, 



58 SONS OF GOD. 

because it was constrained by the strength of the 
evidences laid before them, as because they found a 
witness within their own consciousness which ren- 
dered external argument and evidence superfluous. 
They have had the " witness of the Spirit bearing 
witness with their spirits that they have passed from 
death unto life." They have been aware of God 
directly, just as they have been aware directly of 
their own lives. This religious experience has not 
been confined to any one type of man or woman. It 
does not show itself solely in those who are predis- 
posed to hysterics. Philosophers, mathematicians, 
students of physical science, soldiers, statesmen, men 
of affairs, all alike have borne their testimony to it. 
Take, for example, three men, as unlike one another 
as it is possible to imagine, unlike in mental habit 
and training, in manner of education, in situation and 
character, — Augustine of Hippo, Francis of Sales, 
and John Wesley of London and Oxford. They 
lived at different periods with centuries between, in 
widely removed countries, and in the midst of speech 
and manners not intelligible to one another, yet 
the religious experience of the one might stand for 
that of any of the others, or for that of millions 
beside. They believed that they " had really come to 
know the Lord Jesus Christ; that in an interview 
between their souls and their Lord they entered into 
a relation with Him as real, and as vivid in conscious- 
ness, as is any other experience of the affections or 
the cognition faculties." 

Augustine in a shady nook of his mother's garden ; 



PERSONAL RELIGION. 59 

Francis in his lonely walk along the deserted streets 
of a plague-stricken city ; Wesley sitting in his study 
in London and reading a dry commentary, — all passed 
through a like experience. A Presence encompassed 
them about, and a voice spoke within their souls 
which they could not but confess was the same which 
arrested Saul on his way to Damascus. These men, 
being accustomed to clear thinking, were able to dis- 
criminate in this experience between what was their 
own, and what affected them from without, as the 
mass of Christians do not and cannot ; but they ex- 
pressly repudiated any endowment not equally possi- 
ble for all men. 

This same personal consciousness of Christ finds 
constant expression in the hymns of Christian devo- 
tion. Indeed, it is probably the most distinctive 
mark of Christian poetry. It is subjective. It does 
not deal, as does Pagan or Hebrew poetry, with the 
affairs of man, or the glories of God, but with the 
emotions which the soul undergoes in the presence of 
Jesus Christ. In some favorite hymns, with large 
classes of Christians, this language of love borrows 
phrases and modes of expression from the most ardent 
hymns of erotic passion. Indeed, there have been 
not a few who found the most satisfactory expression 
for their religious affections in the unbridled sensual- 
ity of Solomon's Song ! But however it be expressed, 
it is probably the common thought about religion, in 
America at least, that its starting-point and first 
necessity, in every individual, is a conscious succes- 
sion of emotions which are stirred by the contact of 



60 SONS OF GOD. 

the spirit of the man for the first time with the spirit 
of Jesus Christ. 

Now, what shall we, sober-minded Church people, 
say to all this? We have a deep distrust of emo- 
tional religion. An " Experience Meeting" would 
be the most dreadful place in which we could find 
ourselves. Few among us are aware of what a large 
place "experimental religion" holds in the religious 
world about us ; that applicants for admission to the 
Church are carefully examined upon it. That in 
public and social meetings the detailing of " expe- 
riences" is the staple exercise. That the question of 
how one feels is esteemed of supreme importance 
above that of how he does or how he thinks. All 
this is offensive to us. Its phraseology sounds un- 
real, and is associated in our minds with unctuous 
hyprocrisy. We are reticent. We could no more 
bring ourselves to expose to public gaze our religious 
experience than we could our love experiences. Very 
rarely, in the confidence of intimate friendship, dur- 
ing a quiet walk in the w T oods, or sitting of a summer 
evening by the seashore, we may draw aside a corner 
of the curtain which hides the soul from vulgar gaze, 
and allow a friend to see what has passed there. 
But to insist that the soul should be constantly on 
exhibition, as is the body or the mind, seems to us 
monstrous. We would have the sense of being in- 
decently exposed. But then what shall we say to the 
undeniable fact that religion is an experience ? The 
reply is not as easy for us as it is for many. 

The non-religious world has an answer ready. 



PERSONAL RELIGION. 61 

"Oh, yes;" they say, "these emotions which you 
call religious are common to all men. They always 
have been. They are but the projection of one's self 
into the infinite, so far that one's identity becomes 
confused, and he fancies his own voice to be the voice 
of God. This faculty, which you call religious, is 
but the feeling of wonder in the presence of sur- 
rounding mystery, which has always spoken this 
way. It produces the medicine-man among the sav- 
ages, the yogi and the fakir among Orientals, the 
pythoness among the Greeks, the " seer " among the 
Hebrews, and the "saint" in Christian times. It is, 
after all, nothing but a man talking to himself, and 
imagining his own voice to come from the heavens. 
It is an experience, to be sure, but all its ingre- 
dients are provided by the man himself." 

The Romanist has a reply equally ready. " True," 
he says, "these deep soul tragedies are real and 
always possible. But they are not common. They 
do not have place in the life of the ordinary Chris- 
tian. He lives by the simple rule prescribed for him 
by Holy Church. In his life is little or no self- 
consciousness. Indeed, the less of it he has the 
better. But there are always a few to whom God 
vouchsafes personal speech. These are the saints. 
They are called to special honor in the Church, and 
at death go past purgatory immediately into heaven. 
They are not set before us as examples, because in 
the very nature of the case, the thing which distin- 
guishes them from others, and produces their peculiar 
sanctity, is a special and arbitrary revelation of God 



62 SONS OF GOD. 

himself to them. We may pray to them ; we cannot 
follow them." 

The popular notion about the matter is vague, but 
in substance it thinks of a conscious " Conversion " 
as the beginning of a Christian life. It has no very 
clear idea of what it means by the term; but it 
accepts it all the same, and is inclined to doubt the 
" vital piety " of any Protestant who offers to ques- 
tion or qualify it. It does not object to a Roman 
Catholic doing so, for it is vaguely aware that in his 
case he offers a substitute for personal spiritual 
guidance in the shape of the authority of the 
Church. 

Now, what really is at the bottom of it all? How 
shall we harmonize the language of Scripture, the 
phraseology of hymns and biographies, the common 
speech of the Christian world, with our own reti- 
cence and absence of religious self-consciousness? 
To speak with all candor, we lament our cold hearted- 
ness and incapacity to enter into the deep religious 
feeling which has left itself on record; but at the 
same time, we are honestly distrustful of emotional 
religion, because we have seen so often its tendency 
to relax the moral fibre, and weaken the mental vigor, 
of those in whom it shows itself most markedly. 

In this dilemma, I venture to offer two or three 
considerations which have brought a measure of re- 
lief to myself, and may to some of you. 

The first is the impossibility of accuracy in lan- 
guage about the affections. When we read the con- 
fessions of a lover, we can never be quite sure what 



PERSONAL RELIGION. 63 

he means. One person will habitually apply the 
names of love, hate, disgust, devotion, to the most 
languid and shallow movements of feeling. Another 
will only use such terms about the most fiery, tur- 
bulent, overwhelming cataclysms of emotion. From 
the mere reading of the record we can never be at 
all sure which kind, or rather which intensity of 
experience, is meant. If you try any affection which 
you are sure you have felt by the language of the 
poets or novelists, you will be almost sure to think 
their expressions exaggerated. Let it be conjugal 
love, and Alkestis seems impossible ; filial love, and 
Antigone is overstrained ; erotic love, and the poets 
are phrase-spinners, and seem to exaggerate the thing, 
after the manner of their kind. 

Now, the same thing is probably true as to the 
language of apostles, saints, and psalmists concern- 
ing human love for God. "My soul is athirst for 
God ; yea, when shall I come to appear before God ; " 
— "It is I, yet not I, but Christ that dwelleth in 
me," — 

" Jesus, the very thought of thee 
With sweetness fills the breast.' ' 

Who among us can honestly adopt any of these 
phrases as his own? And yet may we not fairly 
believe that our own love for God is as deep and as 
real as that of apostle, psalmist, or poet ? 

Here are two persons who live in the bonds of a 
deep and strong friendship. One of them is reticent, 
not self-conscious, never examines or thinks of his 
affection for his friend, would be disturbed and dis- 



64 SONS OF GOD. 

tressed at any demonstration of affection, but will 
stand by him through good report and ill, will share 
his last dollar with him as a matter of course, will 
postpone his own advantage to serve his friend. 
The other is ardent, demonstrative, self-conscious, 
outspoken. Now, of the two, it is always the latter 
who writes the record. Is it to be wondered at if 
the expressions he uses seem too high to describe the 
friendship which was in the other's heart? 

The crystal vessels in which the saints and apos- 
tles stored the record of their love for God are too 
capacious for our smaller store ; but ours, though 
smaller, may be just as true and genuine. 

But, after every allowance has been made, it still 
remains true that this conscious interplay of affection 
between one's self and God must be present. It is 
true, or at least it appears to be true, that without it 
an upright, and in a sense a religious, life may be 
conducted. But in its absence such a life is wanting 
both in enthusiasm and in security. An examina- 
tion of evidences may entirely satisfy the under- 
standing ; pictures of the place and manner of reward 
or penalty may fill the imagination; the struggle 
after duty may content the conscience ; but still 
something is wanting. There is present " the voice 
of them who conquer, and the cry of them that are 
overcome, — but the sound as the sound of singing" 
is not heard ! 

But then " How shall I come to appear before 
God? " If God were to call to any one of us, as to 
Samuel, we would gladly answer, " Speak, Lord, for 



PERSONAL RELIGION. 65 

thy servant heareth." But which way shall we turn, 
where shall we go in the daylight or the night, what 
attitude shall we observe, to catch a divine voice in a 
world where all is silent to our ears ? This, it seems 
to me, is the very mystery which St. Paul declares 
that Jesus has laid open. He that hath seen Him 
hath seen the Father ! The very core of Christianity 
is the belief that Jesus is God. Now, what personality 
is anything like so well known, as clearly imaged 
in the intelligence, as easily presentable before the 
thought, as Jesus ? In point of fact, we know Him 
better than we do any other person, living or dead. 
It is the strange power which belongs to Him that He 
becomes real and living to every one who steadfastly 
regards Him. This is the ultimate and always avail- 
able proof of His Divinity. He realizes Himself in 
any human soul who learns of him and turns toward 
him with admiration. As the admiration deepens, 
the sense of his very reality increases, until in the 
Christian it takes the form, not of a governing prin- 
ciple, but of an abiding personal friendship. In a 
few choice natures so happily constituted, it sweeps 
away their very being, and substitutes for it the very 
nature of Christ. Their identity becomes confused, 
and they exclaim, "It is I, yet not I, but Christ 
that dwelleth in me ! " 

I know there are some who are unable to hear in 
all this anything but "words, words, words." It is 
to them, — " Like a tale told by an idiot, sound and 
fury, signifying nothing." It is unreasonable. 

I would, in all candor, remind such that all human 



66 SONS OF GOD. 

affections are unreasonable. But they are none the 
less real. Ask yourself why you love your wife, 
your child, your friend, and you will wait in vain for 
an answer. There is no reason why. An affection 
which is able to take an inventory of its contents 
proves by the very act that it is a sham affection. 
" Love is blind." This is true of all sorts of love. It 
does not follow sight ; it finds its affinity by instinct. 
So it is of those in whom Christ has been, or is being, 
formed, the hope of glory. They are slowly finding 
God, and establishing abiding relations with him. 
Sometimes the discovery comes as a spiritual shock, 
an experience easily isolated from all the rest of 
one's emotional life. More frequently the Spirit 
worketh with one's own spirit so insensibly that the 
presence of a strange visitant is all unsuspected. 
More frequently still, the process moves by frequent 
alternations of both methods. But in any and in all 
ways, the phenomenon is the same splendid and 
wonderful one. 

It is the solution of the mystery of living by the 
formation within the soul of the Christ which links 
its possessor to immortality. 



VI. 
GOD'S LOVE FOR MEN. 



VI. 



GOD'S LOVE FOE MEN. 

Epfr. HHE. 14-19. 
" Jor tfjts cause H iioixr mg knees ttnto lije JFatfjer of cur ILortr 
Jesus (£fjrist, ®f fofjont tfje tofjole familg in fjeaben anti eartfj is 
natneti, &ljat fje fooulti grant sow, according to tfye ricfjes of Jjis 
glorg, to be strengthened foitij tnfgfjt bg fjis &girit in tfje inner 
man ; &fjat (Efjrist mag tiiuell in pur Jjearts bg faitJj : tfjat ge, being 
rootetJ anti grountreti in lobe, HHag be able to comprefjenti foitf) all 
saints fofjat is tfje breatJtft, anti lengtfj,antf tieptfj antf Jjeigfjt; "Entr 
to ftnofo tfje lobe of (£fyrist, fofjicfj passetf) fcnofolefcge, tfjat ge migfjt 
be Elletn foitfj ail tfje fulness of <£otJ." 

When the apostle once got fairly before his mind 
the fact that God feels a deep love for men, he was 
filled with amazement. It is a fact hard to believe 
and still harder to realize. Yet it is the starting- 
point of Christianity. It is the very core of the 
revelation of Jesus. His declaration that God is 
Love has changed the temper and life of every man 
and every community which has come to believe that 
what He said was true. It has been a thousand times 
more potent to produce right living than had been 
the previous belief that God is Power. That is to 
say, Love is more potent than Law ; and this is the 
essence of the Gospel. It is hard to believe it, for 
the facts seem to be against it. A ruler or a law can 
compel a certain course of action in those who come 

69 



70 SONS OF GOD. 

under them, and can compel it at once, whereas 
the affection of the ruler may be thrown away upon 
unworthy subjects, producing no results. Love seems 
weak unless force will clear the way for it, and hold 
its object down while love works its will upon him. 
Nevertheless, Jesus insists that God Himself is so 
constituted that He can never rest content until He 
shall have won for Himself the affection of all His 
creatures. He cannot compel this by force of any 
sort or in any sphere. Jesus uncovers the love of 
God for men, and allows it to work. He has serene 
confidence that in the end it will win an answer- 
ing affection in every human soul. It may work by 
very sharp methods ; for Love can be cruel to be 
kind. But, according to Jesus, the object which God 
sets before Himself is not to break a recalcitrant will, 
or compel an obedience to his orders, but to draw all 
men to Himself. This theme is constantly played 
upon in the New Testament. It is the fact which is 
constantly appealed to as a motive Whenever in 
any case it is accomplished, God's purpose is thought 
of as having been in that case secured. There may 
be much still to be desired in the life of a man who 
"has fallen in love with God," but there is no anxiety 
about the issue of such a life. A force is at work 
in it which will ultimately bring all the outlying 
discords of it into harmony. 

" As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you : 
continue ye in my love. If ye keep my command- 
ments, ye shall abide in my love ; even as I have kept 
my Father's commandments, and abide in his love." 



GOD'S LOVE FOR MEN. 71 

" For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, 
nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things 
present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, 
nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us 
from the love of God." 

" Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that 
he loved us. If we love one another, God dwelleth 
in us, and his love is perfected in us." 

Now, I have dwelt at some length upon this truth, 
not because I have been anxious to convince you that 
it is true, for I have no doubt you all assent to it in 
the abstract, but because I want it to sink into your 
minds until it awakens the doubt which always 
springs up concerning it whenever it becomes fairly 
grasped. That God loves men is likely to be believed 
just until one sees what the statement involves, and 
then it is seriously questioned. I think it well to 
start these questionings into life in order that we 
may dispose of them. 

(1.) The first cause of difficulty is one's sense of 
his own insignificance as an individual atom in the 
universe of existence ! That God should have some 
feeling, on a grand scale, toward humanity as a whole, 
does not sound unreasonable. But then think how 
many men there are, and have been, and will be ! 
They are numbered by myriads. When one tries to 
bring the multitude before his imagination he be- 
comes bewildered. Now, can we seriously think of 
God having a distinct and separate affection for 
each? But if this be not the fact, then His "love 
for men " becomes a mere phrase not worth contend- 



72 SONS OF GOD. 

ing about. I hesitate to think that God cares for me 
as an individual, one way or another, — that I am 
anything more to him than an unnoticed unit 
in the great whole of things which he rules by fixed 
laws. 

(2.) A still greater difficulty arises out of the fact 
of human unloveliness. We think of things being 
loved which are lovable. But men, taking them by 
and large, are not very lovely. Even among one's 
own acquaintances, there are only a few who are even 
interesting, and very few indeed who inspire affec- 
tion. Then think of the great mass who seem to 
exist for no special purpose. Stop for a little while 
on a corner of Chestnut Street of a fair and busy 
afternoon, and look at the crowds hurrying by. If 
you watch them steadfastly, they will, after a little, 
come to seem as automata, creatures driven by a pur- 
poseless restlessness. Look at their faces. Most 
are empty of expression, or else have an eager look 
which is still more forbidding. You can see that 
many are vicious, most are stolid. Their lives are 
narrow, their interests are petty, they awake no 
interest and provoke no love. This is the invariable 
impression produced upon one whose duty or office 
leads him to deal with multitudes. The public official, 
the clerk in a public office, the salesman in a great 
store, any one, in short, who comes personally in 
contact with multitudes of people for a considerable 
period of time, comes to have a sort of contempt 
for humanity. He has seen too much of it. Its 
foibles and petty faults have been before such a per- 



GOD'S LOVE FOR MEN. 73 

son so long that he has ceased to feel kindly. He 
has discovered the unloveliness of men. 

Then call to mind that the humanity with which 
we are familiar, and which fails to touch our affec- 
tion, is the best in existence. If you take in as well 
the millions of narrow-browed, dull, brutal, who toil 
in mines or hide in cities' slums ; the worn-out, but 
still vicious millions of the Orient; the millions of 
semi-bestial savages in the Dark Continent and the 
isles of the sea, — the average of the race lalls so 
unspeakably low that it becomes of the utnlost diffi- 
culty to conceive of God as even keeping it in mind, 
much less keeping in his love the individuals who 
compose it ! 

(3.) But there is a third difficulty far more formid- 
able still. That is, the fact of human pain. If it be 
true that God loves his children, why does he leave 
them to suffer so ? This has been the dark mystery 
of the ages. It has led men to atheism. It has led 
them to attribute to God the qualities of the Devil. 
It has driven them in frantic despair to curse God 
and die. It has led men to grovel before God in the 
abject attitude of slaves before an Oriental despot. 
It has led them to throw their children into the 
flames for Moloch, to propitiate an angry deity by 
the costliest gifts. It leads many among us to think 
of a " Law," instead of a Person, at the centre of 
things, so impassible is it, so indifferent to the cries 
of human agony. 

Now, all these facts of human life St. Paul looks 
squarely in the face, and yet bursts out in praise of 



74 SONS OF GOD. 

the goodness and loving kindness of God. Why does 
he do so ? What new light has he upon the " painful 
riddle of life " ? Why is his opinion concerning the 
disposition of God of any more value than that of 
another man? I ask you, then, to notice that he 
does not give his dictum as an opinion at all It is 
not anything which he has thought out, or discov- 
ered, or reached by any method common among men. 
Jesus had said not long before that any one who 
" saw " Him would see the Father. There were some 
who did see Him. Not all who looked at Him, for 
many looked at Him without seeing or recognizing 
Him for what He was, but some did. Among these 
was St. Paul. This sight of God in the face of Jesus 
Christ had the same effect upon him that it always 
has upon those who " see Jesus." It changed his 
estimate of his fellow-men by changing his notion 
about God. It set all the facts of life with which he 
was familiar in a new light. They remained the 
same, but they no longer meant the same. As he 
learned from his Master what is the real disposition 
of God toward men, they ceased to be insignificant, 
contemptible, or hateful. They became pathetic, in- 
spiring, dreadful. As an educated and exclusive 
Jew, he had thought of the mass as "a people 
who know not the Law, and are accursed." As 
a Christian, the same people became so valuable 
that he was ready to pluck out his eyes for them, 
and even intimated that he would be ready to 
lose his own soul for them. This discovery that 
all men are sons of God is the copious spring out 



GOD'S LOVE FOR MEN. 75 

of which has flowed that unfailing " Enthusiasm of 
Humanity " which is the mark of Christianity. It 
is only within Christendom that a man is held to be 
intrinsically valuable. This valuation is based, not 
upon what he shows at the moment, but of what he 
is in his very nature. The thing which strikes most 
painfully a traveller in a heathen land is the low esti- 
mate of human life. The natives may be gentle and 
kindly as in Japan, wise as in China, acute, subtle, 
and graceful as in India, but in no case are they 
shocked as we are by unnecessary waste or loss of 
human life. Philanthropy is in its origin Christian. 
It started from the revelation of Jesus Christ, the 
truth which He was the first to get men really to 
believe, that God has a personal interest in men ; an 
interest which does not depend upon their character 
or their accomplishments, but upon their relationship 
to Himself. It is only so long as Philanthropy is able 
to maintain connection with this, its base of supplies, 
that it remains effective. As has been shown a thou- 
sand times, whenever a man or a society which at- 
tempts charitable work, and which has begun with a 
distinctly religious motive, but declines from its faith 
and comes to work upon a humanitarian basis, it loses 
both its enthusiasm and its effectiveness. This must 
be so in the nature of the case. Love for men is 
only possible in the presence of God. 

So absolute is the Christian's conviction of God's 
loving kindness that he ventures to seek for the 
explanation of human pain in it ! This would seem 
to be the extremity of wrong-headedness. But he 
does it clearly, — 



76 SONS OF GOD. 

" My son, despise not thou the chastening of the 
Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him : For 
whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth 
every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chasten- 
ing, God dealeth with you as with sons ; for what 
son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if 
ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partak- 
ers, then are ye bastards, and not sons. Further- 
more, we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected 
us, and we gave them reverence : shall we not much 
rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and 
live ? For they verily for a few days chastened us 
after their own pleasure ; but he for our profit, that 
we might be partakers of his holiness." 

Now, no theory of the origin or meaning of pain is 
altogether satisfactory. But is there any more rea- 
sonable one than this ? It asserts in effect that the 
ills which assault men and torture them, or at best, 
take the zest out of living, are neither meaningless 
accidents which come from nowhere and for no 
reason, nor are they the purposeless agonies caused 
by the crampings of a soulless " Law," but that they 
are the smartings from the stripes of a rod laid on 
reluctantly, but intentionally, by a father. It is 
quite true that we all see and feel many an ill which 
we cannot honestly account for on this theory. 
There are sufferings which do not educate. They 
teach no lesson to the victim, because they do not 
leave the victim alive to learn the lesson. Or the 
lesson is so obscure that its purpose cannot be read. 
A cyclone sweeps away a man's fortune and maims 



GOD'S LOVE FOR MEN. 77 

his child, and what fault is it meant to punish, or 
what lesson to teach ? Was it a fault to build upon 
a fair and inviting prairie ? Is the bare fact that 
there are cyclones in that region a truth worth learn- 
ing at such a cost? This is all true, and there are a 
thousand ills which we are not able to place under 
this " Educational " theory of suffering. But, then, 
what other theory is there ? Of course one can dis- 
miss the problem as insoluble. He may clench his 
fist like Ajax, and defy the brandished darts of Jove. 
He may picture existence as a sphinx with expres- 
sionless face, with the soft, inviting breast of a 
woman, and the claws of a wild beast. He may 
think of a universe compelled by a Law which has 
no self-consciousness, and which grinds without hate 
and without ruth. But I say without hesitation that 
none of these theories of life bring, to me at any rate, 
the same intellectual relief, to say nothing of moral 
uplift, as does the Christian doctrine that God is 
Love, and that He is slowly school-mastering his chil- 
dren into a recognition of their relationship to Him. 

St. Paul calls the love of God a mystery. It is so. 
All the primal, fundamental forces are mysteries. 
That is to say, they are entities of whose existence no 
one, to whom they have been revealed, can ever again 
doubt; but what they are in themselves, and how 
they work to fulfil their results, no man has ever seen. 
This is the case, for example, with regard to gravita- 
tion. It is a mystery. In fact, it is nothing but a 
name. But in the sphere of physical things it ope- 
rates so generally, and its formulas bring so much 



78 SONS OF GOD. 

intellectual rest, that wherever it is announced it is 
received by all who are capable of apprehending it 
at all. In the higher sphere of moral things, Jesus' 
declaration, that Love rules de facto as well as de jure 
solves so many difficulties, and opens so many other- 
wise closed lines of motion, that the number who 
accept it as true has steadily increased for centuries. 
Longfellow set the deep Christian truth to verse : — 

"Love is the root of creation; God's essence; worlds without 

number 
Lie in His bosom like children ; He made them for this purpose 

only. 
Only to love and to be loved again, He breathed forth His spirit 
Into the slumbering dust, and upright standing, it laid its 
Hand on its heart, and felt it was warm with a flame out of 

heaven." 



VII. 

THE PERMANENT ELEMENT IN 
CHRISTIANITY. 



VII. 

THE PEKMANENT ELEMENT IN 

CHRISTIANITY. 

X dor. IHHE. 8. 

" ©ijarttg tteber fatletfj ; but fofjetfjer tfjere be prophecies, tfjeg sfjall 
fail ; fofjetijer tijere be tongues, tfjeg sfjail cease ; tofjetfjer tfjere be 
ftnofoletJge, it sJjall banisfj atoag." 

Heaven and earth were, in a certain way, nearer 
to each other during the thirty years of the life of 
Jesus than they have ever been before or since. In 
theory it has never been absurd, and is not now, to 
expect a "sign," a "miracle," a "mighty work." 
There is no assignable reason why such a thing 
should not be. All that the most bigoted materialist 
can say is that " miracles do not happen." He does 
not venture to say that they cannot, or will not, or 
have not. He only asserts that the universe, in so 
far as he knows it, does not show any such thing. 
Christians believe in miracles, to some extent, but 
they believe in something else still more. They are 
not so credulous as to accept blindly the literal 
reality of everything in profane or sacred literature 
which claims to be a supernatural portent. But they 
find no difficulty in believing that at certain times, 
and for certain well-defined purposes, there have oc- 
curred what the materialist calls " divine incursions." 

81 



82 SONS OF GOD. 

That is to say, things have happened to men, and in 
the presence of men, whose rationale is not to be 
sought for in the natural forces and processes with 
which either physical or psychological science deals. 
Such events have not occurred with any regularity, 
or with anything like even distribution throughout 
the period of human history. They have occurred 
when they were needed, or when they served a pur- 
pose. An extraordinary cycle of them clustered about 
the time and place of Jesus Christ. There seemed 
to have been, if one may put it so, a sort of spiritual 
excitement throughout the universe which was set 
up by the Incarnation. The interplay between the 
seen and the unseen was then most vivid and fre- 
quent. It began with the angelic vision to Zacharias 
in the Temple. The Annunciation, the song of the 
heavenly choirs, the communication to the Magi, the 
vocal heavens and the resonant earth at the Birth, 
the unnumbered signs and wonders which attended 
upon the words and steps of Jesus, the rocking of the 
earth, and dimming of the sun's light, and the flitting 
about of ghostly phantoms at the Crucifixion, all 
these were in the entourage of the Divine Man. 

Gradually the spiritual disturbance subsided. It 
had swept through the universe as an electric storm 
illuminates the northern sky, deflects the normal 
currents of earth, and sinks again into wonted equi- 
librium. 

But the first generation of Christians, who had 
lived in a time when, if one may say so, the super- 
natural was natural, were most reluctant to believe 



PERMANENT ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY. 83 

that it should cease, and that men and things should 
resume again their life under the natural order of 
things. They had had, for a time, that fine spiritual 
exaltation which enables one to pierce the future, and 
become a seer. They had prophesied. The limita- 
tions of past and future had fallen away from them 
for a little, and they had seen things to come as 
already present. Their defects in learning and lan- 
guage had been, for a little, supplemented by a 
strange " gift of tongues." When they found these 
to be less and less frequently to be depended upon, 
they were sorely disturbed. It seemed then as 
though the old work-a-day world was sucking them 
in again, that the reign of spiritual things was dying 
away. St. Paul pointed out to them that this was 
inevitable. "Whether there be prophecies, they shall 
fail ; whether there be tongues, they shall cease." The 
Church was slow to believe him. In point of fact, it 
never has believed him. In the record, " ecclesiastical 
miracles " follow hard upon apostolic times. They 
sprung from the deep craving for immediate spiritual 
vision. Just in proportion as the Church fell away 
from its spiritual fervor and early moral insight, these 
grotesque and frequently repulsive signs came to be 
more and more readily accepted. The belief still 
survives. The blood of St. Januarius still liquefies ; 
the withered mummy of San Spiro is still carried 
about the streets of Corfu, while the faithful re- 
count to one another the story of his miracles upon 
the mules ; the stigmata of St. Francis are still de- 
fended by appeals to apocryphal science ; pilgrims 



84 SONS OF GOD. 

still flock to Lourdes and Knock, and the sick are 
carried by hundreds for cure by a Swiss monk at 
Pittsburg. The misapprehension is deep-rooted and 
widespread. Even so sagacious a thinker as Dr. 
Bushnell felt bound, in the interest of an indefensible 
theory, to vindicate nineteenth century miracles. 

It need not be asserted that such things have 
passed away for always. Humanity, moving in its 
orbit, may again cut into the orbit of supernatural 
verities at a point where they may become visible and 
frequent. Just as at regularly irregular intervals of 
years the earth passes through the orbit of the 
meteoric bodies at a point where they are abundant, 
and at such times there are showers of "falling 
stars " in the earth's atmosphere, so the path of 
Humanity's moral movement has led through places 
where heavenly phenomena were abundant. Con- 
ceivably it may do so again. But the Church has 
been slow to learn that her Master has committed her 
fortunes to the forces which are regular and constant. 
No sign will be shown to a wicked and adulterous 
generation, no fire from heaven can be called down 
upon a recalcitrant village, and no mighty work may 
be forthcoming to convince the unbeliever, or to 
make the way easy for the discouraged saint. This 
method had its place, and filled it, whereupon it 
ceased, vanished, passed away, according to the 
apostle's word. 

But when it passed away another unrealizable hope 
took its place, and has survived even until now, 
when it also shows signs of ceasing. That is 



PERMANENT ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY. 85 

"knowledge." Immediately after apostolic times 
the Church set about the necessary task of formulat- 
ing its doctrine. It made the deliberate attempt to 
state the Gospel of Jesus Christ in formal propo- 
sitions. It constructed its Creeds. It did not invent 
the substance of the Creeds, of course. But at Nice, 
and Caesarea, and Constantinople, it determined upon 
the formal statements of the truths of the Gospel. 
The purpose was to state the truth of Christianity in 
clearly intelligible and logically defensible terms. 
It was not meant that there should be any further 
room for ignorance. It was believed that an ex- 
haustive knowledge of divine things was possible, 
and ought to be attained as soon as might be. This 
knowledge was added to from time to time. It 
descended more and more into detail. The Church 
passed through the scholastic ages, during which 
every bundle of Christian grain was threshed and 
winnowed. The "Fathers " stated and defended the 
truth in countless volumes. The Schoolmen raised 
and laid every conceivable and inconceivable objec- 
tion. The Councils of the Reformation period drew 
out the intellectual contents of Christianity in the 
minutest detail. They set them forth in the Thirty- 
nine Articles, in the Westminster Confession, the 
Decrees of Trent and Dort and Augsburg. They 
were unmindful of St. Paul's explicit declaration, that 
" whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away ; " 
literally, it shall be "transitory." In our own gen- 
eration the apostle's declaration is evidently becom- 
ing vindicated, and to the great disturbance and 



86 SONS OF GOD. 

apprehension of many devout men. That this is 
true is evident, I think, to any one who will open his 
eyes and look. The exact " knowledge," that is, the 
logical statements and arguments from Christ's Gos- 
pel, in which men have rested as a finality, are 
dropping out of sight on every hand. Doctrines, 
confessions, formularies, which were once, and not 
so long ago either, deemed to be so true that they 
were worth going to the stake for, are dropping out 
of sight on every hand. How many of you have 
ever carefully read the Articles of Religion in the 
Prayer Book ? How many of you would be willing 
to have the Athanasian Creed restored to our Prayer 
Book, from which it was dropped a century ago ? 
The revision of its Confession of Faith has been 
deliberately pronounced to be necessary by one of the 
greatest and clearest-minded of American churches. 
Doctrines which once passed for knowledge have 
come to be seen for ignorance. The literal inspira- 
tion of the Scriptures, the creation of the world in 
six natural days, the Miltonic conception of the 
" Fall," the expiatory theory of the Atonement, and 
such as these, are items in the knowledge which St. 
Paul warned the Church were to be transitory. 

But what then? What abides? And can it be 
secure of abiding if these things and the like pass 
away? These are the questions w^hich many ask 
with earnestness, and some with terror. 

I answer in the apostle's words, " Charity never 
faileth." And I know very well the sense of unsatis- 
fiedness which the answer leaves in many minds. 



PERMANENT ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY. 87 

They say, " Your words would seem to imply that 
miracles and doctrines are of no account ; that the 
Church has always been mistaken about these things. 
You abandon all effort to defend them, and resolve 
Christianity into a sentiment. So long as you give 
us good and wonderful miracles to satisfy our faith, 
and clearly stated doctrines to satisfy our under- 
standings, we have something to go upon. We know 
then where we are. We can meet and wage war 
with the adversaries. We know where we stand. 
But you take these things away, and our religion is 
gone." 

I reply, that I do not take these things away at all. 
I have tried to state what I believe to be the facts of 
the past and the present. I do not create either the 
past facts or the present situation. I simply say that 
it is best for us to look the facts in the face, and I 
assert that when we do so we find that they have 
happened as Jesus and his apostles said they would 
happen. What has happened to the Church is what 
always happens to a living creature. Its life does 
not depend upon its body ; its body depends upon its 
life. As an individual, your body was and is shaped 
by your living soul. That it was which determined 
originally that the atoms of matter which form your 
body should take the shape of a man, and not of 
some other animal. A beast's life gathers to itself 
the thews and claws, and fur or feathers, of a beast. 
The plant life gathers to itself matter, and moulds it 
into the shape of a tree or flower. God giveth to every 
seed a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed 



88 SONS OF GOD. 

his own body. The Christ life gathers about it and 
gives shape to the body of Christ on earth, even the 
Church. But I ask you to notice well, it is not 
the Church which keeps Christianity alive ; it is the 
spirit of Christ which keeps the Church alive. This 
spirit gathers to itself individual atoms, it reshapes 
and transforms them as individuals, it builds them 
together into a society, it develops in the society the 
faculty of speech, it speaks by a thousand tongues, 
to every man "in the tongue wherein he was born." 
The theology, the organization, of the Church is then 
but the body which is created by its essential spirit. 
Her customs and m'ethods are but the clothes which 
that body wears, and which change with the fashion 
of the times. Or, to leave metaphor and speak 
explicitly, the Church is not built up around a set of 
miraculous facts, nor around a set of theological 
doctrines : it is built up around the spirit which was 
in Jesus, which spirit was Love. Its central, vital 
principle is " Charity." This is immortal. It pre- 
ceded the Church in point of time, and will survive 
it ; but it has in this dispensation a close and neces- 
sary relation to it. 

The burden of Jesus' message is, that God loves men, 
and therefore they ought also to love one another. 
They ought to do so. But, as he clearly recognizes, 
such affection is neither common nor easy. He set 
about to produce it. In his first public address, he 
asserted in the most uncompromising way that men 
must come into this temper. They must love, not 
their friends only, — anybody, even the Publicans, 



PERMANENT ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY. 89 

could do that, — but their enemies also. They must 
be alert, not only to return courtesy for courtesy, — 
anybody could do that, — but return good for evil. 
They must not be put out if asked to go a mile to 
show a stranger the way, but must volunteer another 
mile for Love's sake. He declares that the future and 
final classification of men will hinge upon the pos- 
session or absence of this temper. He who possesses 
it to the smallest degree, even enough to induce him 
to give a cup of cold water for human love's sake, 
shows that he has the spark of Divine Life in him ; 
he who fails utterly here is dead, and condemned 
already. Before his departure he ordains his Holy 
Sacrament to be for all time both a perpetual pledge 
and reminder, and also a constant producer of charity. 
The Holy Communion is the sacrament of love. 
It takes the act of brotherly communion which is 
the expression of affection, and labels it Holy. No 
better exemplification of my thesis can be found 
than this sacrament. Many have been in the way of 
thinking that the true nature of the Holy Eucharist 
is to be safeguarded by calling attention to the super- 
natural quality which inheres in it because of 
Christ's presence there. Or that it is only safe and 
permanent when the Church holds and teaches with 
authority correct notions as to its nature. Both these 
seem to me to strangely miss the mark. The stress 
which has been laid upon these has only availed to 
produce the monstrous result, that the sacrament 
which was meant to be the very bond of peace, the 
sign and pledge of Christian love, has been the bone 



90 SONS OF GOD. 

of contention around which has been carried on the 
theological wranglings of centuries. Christendom is 
broken in two over the Mass ! Men have persisted 
in seeing in it a sign, when they had the apostle's 
word that signs shall fail; they have sought to 
identify it with a knowledge, when he had declared 
that knowledge vanisheth away, and have missed in 
it the charity which never faileth. 

The Christian Church is organized around an 
emotion ; to speak more accurately, it is organized 
around a principle of life. This principle is Love. 
As men come to realize what their true relation is to 
God and their fellows, they come to realize their 
kinship with God, for God is Love. It is out of 
these new created souls that the Church springs. It 
is Charity, which is the constant force, that keeps 
the organized body together. It keeps the doctrine 
sound and the practice reasonable. The formula, 
" the faith delivered to the saints," is far more pro- 
foundly true than most of those who have it so 
frequently on their lips ever dream. It is always 
true. It is only to the saints that the faith can be 
delivered. For " faith " is a moral and not an intel- 
lectual thing. It is only the " saints " — that, is those 
who possess the charity of Christ — who can receive it. 
The truth of Christ has been obscured for ages by 
the pre-eminence which has been given to miracle and 
dogma. But let us be candid, and confess that it is 
hard to see how it could have been otherwise. The 
cluster of miracles which attended upon its foundation 
were so striking that they strongly arrested the atten- 



PERMANENT ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY. 91 

tion of the ages. The systematic theology has been 
but the inevitable attempt to manifest the life of the 
innermost soul in terms of the understanding. These 
have been the hard, strong, and sometimes repellent, 
husk and shell which conserved for the time the life 
of the kernel. But now, on every hand, these are 
yielding to the gentle solicitations of the recurring 
seasons, they are opening and falling away, to allow 
the priceless seed of Christian charity to sink into 
the soil of human society, that it may bud and 
bloom, and bear fruit. The promise of the harvest is 
on every side. The growing gentleness of manners, 
the decadence of doctrinal hardness, the multiplica- 
tion of agencies of charity, both within the Church 
and without, the eager attention given to the bitter 
cry of the outcast, the feverish anxiety to provide a 
place for the weak and helpless at the banquet of 
life, — all these are the first fruits of the abundant 
harvest already ripening, which springs from that 
seed of charity which never faileth. 



VIII. 

JESUS' ESTIMATE OF HUMAN VALUE. 



VIII. 

JESUS' ESTIMATE OF HUMAN VALUE. 

fltatt.3BBE.--t2. 

" $ofo mucfj is a man better tfjan a sijeep ? " 

One Sabbath day a man with a withered hand came 
to our Lord and asked to be healed. The Pharisaic 
precisians, who were standing by, interposed an objec- 
tion. They said the man ought to wait till the next 
day. To cure him then and there would be a viola- 
tion of the regulations concerning the Sabbath day. 
It is not necessary to suppose that their objection was 
either captious or dishonest. It would not lay any 
special hardship upon the man to wait, and it was of 
importance that the sanctity of the Sabbath should be 
maintained. It was an institution whose practical 
use had been vindicated by centuries of experience. 
But it was an institution which could only be sus- 
tained by ceaseless vigilance. There was always 
somebody ready to encroach upon it in the interest 
of his own personal advantage. But if exception 
was allowed in one case, not clearly of overwhelming 
necessity, then another would ask the same favor, and 
another, and another, and the Sabbath rest, which was 
such a social and national blessing, would be lost. For 
this reason surgery, and most of medicine, were un- 

95 



96 SONS OF GOD. 

lawful on that day. It is not very easy for us to 
realize that to their way of thinking the cure which 
it was proposed that Jesus should perform had in it 
no element of religion. It was quite a matter of 
course that a great Hakim should perform such a 
cure, but then the Hakim was no more exempt from 
Sabbath-day restrictions than was another man. And 
Jesus did not question the soundness of their prem- 
ises, but He showed them in three sentences that 
their conclusion was wrong. 

" What man shall there be among you that shall 
have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the Sab- 
bath day will he not lay hold on it and lift it out ? " 

That would be a breach of regulations also ; but 
then it was clearly justifiable by an appeal to that con- 
viction which has always been powerful in the Jew, 
the sacredness of property. They would unhesitat- 
ingly rescue a sheep on the Sabbath, not because the 
sheep was suffering, but because it was worth money. 
They would not have understood Him if He had 
appealed to their pity, either for a sheep or a man, 
but He appealed to their commercial instinct, " How 
much is a man better than a sheep?" If the law of 
the Sabbath can be set aside to save a sheep because 
it is too valuable to be lost, what may not be done in 
the interest of a man by one who is alive to his 
intrinsic value ? In this case His argument was tri- 
fling because He was dealing with trifling people, and 
may it not have had something of pleasantry in it ? 
But it is of a piece with His whole way of thinking of 
humanity. 



JESUS' ESTIMATE OF HUMAN VALUE. 97 

According to Him, this is God's way of feeling 
about men. They are too valuable to be lost. He 
came "to seek and to save" them, because to His 
judgment they were intrinsically worth saving. The 
price which He paid shows how He, at any rate, esti- 
mated them. There is a homely old proverb to the 
effect that " the worst use you can put a man to is to 
hang him." It sometimes must be done, but it is a 
waste which is incurred reluctantly. To damn him 
would be a still worse use. This also may be neces- 
sary ; but we may be sure that it will be done still 
more reluctantly. 

Now, I wish you seriously to consider the ques- 
tion, whether this exalted estimate of the value of 
humanity which Jesus entertained is a correct one ? 
That He really did hold it I shall try to show after a 
little, but at present I only ask you to consider the 
valuation itself. 

Whether it be correct or not, it is contrary to the 
opinion unhesitatingly expressed by very many whom 
men have accounted wise. Mr. Carlyle once took 
occasion to speak of the population of England as 
" thirty millions, mostly fools." There is no reason 
to doubt that this contemptuous estimate expressed 
his real thought. Horace had said the same thing 
centuries before him, and Caesar had endorsed it. 
The Pharisees held the same view, and the philoso- 
phers agreed with them to a man. But, what is most 
significant to us, the religious world has, in large 
measure, taken the same view. Even David, who 
discerned that man was set in a place not far below 



98 SONS OF GOD. 

the angels, failed to comprehend the real force of the 
fact, and asks in impatience, " What is man that thou 
art mindful of him, or the son of man that thou visit- 
est him ? Man is like to vanity ; his days are as a 
shadow that passeth away." This estimate of the 
poet king, and that of his splendid son, passed into 
the thought of the Jews, and probably remains there 
until this day. Jesus was utterly free from it, 
though there are traces of their hereditary notions 
upon this subject in the words of some of the New 
Testament writers. But in the Western Christen- 
dom in which we live, the great Augustine's mean 
and false estimate of man holds almost universal 
sway. He was the great theological system-builder 
of the Western Church. His theology has been 
dominant for more than fourteen hundred years. 
He had been reared a pagan, He was a philosopher, 
a scholar, a man of affairs, and lived in debauchery 
until nearly middle life. When he became a Chris- 
tian he pursued his new profession with the same 
fierce eagerness that had marked his old studies and 
his old dissipations. But he brought with him into 
Christianity the same low estimate of man's worth 
which marked the shallow, cruel, despairing pagan- 
ism of decadent Rome. This dark view of human 
character was intensified by the unflinching examina- 
tion which he made of himself. When he looked 
within, he saw a personality beneath contempt. He 
mistakenly assumed that that represented the aver- 
age man. But his genius and his sanctity availed to 
carry his doctrine of " total depravity " throughout 



JESUS' ESTIMATE OF HUMAN VALUE. 99 

the Western Church, and bound it upon the minds 
of men for centuries to come. In the Middle Ages 
he was the master, and the Roman Church still 
accepts his theology. Luther, an Augustinian 
monk, brought it into the theology of the Germanic 
Reformation. Calvin, in his Institutes, expounded 
the same theology, and fastened it upon the French, 
and Scotch, and American world. There are traces 
of it in our Prayer Book, and our Articles adopted 
it, without question, as a part of the common thought 
of the time when they were formulated. It is now 
the thought about man which is popularly accepted 
as " orthodox." It speaks of man in terms of con- 
tempt. It fancies that by exaggerating his degrada- 
tion and unworthiness it so far exalts the goodness, 
and mercy, and compassion of God. The more con- 
temptible the thing saved can be made out to be, the 
more glorious will be the Saviour and the salvation. 
It has come about also in our time that physical 
science has joined forces with orthodox theology 
to vilify human nature. If David thought meanly 
of man, whom he saw to be, on his spiritual side, 
"little lower than the angels," what must a genera- 
tion think which has found him to be, on his physi- 
cal side, little higher than the ape ? We have all 
come to believe that this is substantially true. We 
have traced the history of the race away beyond that 
portion of its course with which Scripture is con- 
cerned. We trace the path back to Eden, cross the 
Garden, and pass out at the other side, following the 
trail to the primeval caves in which prehuman brutes 



100 SONS OF GOD. 

snarled, and gnawed their bones. We have watched 
through the ages the heavings of the sea of humanity. 
We have seen individuals, now and again, thrown 
high up on the shore of some new achievement in 
morals or knowledge, and have seen their descendants 
hold the vantage gained. But the temper of our 
science is to think meanly of the great, uncounted, 
unthinking, unfeeling mass. It expects and hopes of 
them little more than that they shall be the soil out 
of which better things shall grow " with the passing 
of the suns." The last word of physical science, 
and the last word of Calvinistic theology concern- 
ing man, is the same : he is " vile earth " ! 

Now, set over against this Jesus' estimate of human 
nature. As a starting-point, consider the title by 
which He commonly described Himself, — the " Son of 
man." He seemed always solicitous that there should 
be no mistake about what He was. He was a man. 
Whatever humanity might be, that, He wanted it 
understood, He was. He asked no exemptions. He 
identified Himself with men absolutely. He was not 
God masquerading. He was a man, and therefore a 
son of God. All His thought of His work for men 
is colored by this belief in the intrinsic value of man. 
In that great trilogy of parables from which Chris- 
tianity shines out, this is conspicuous, — the lost coin, 
the lost sheep, the lost man. A woman loses a coin. 
It rolls away into obscurity and darkness ; it be- 
comes overlaid with dust and rubbish ; it is lost to 
circulation and to its owner's use : but the Divine 
mistress never conceives of it as being anything but 



JESUS' ESTIMATE OF HUMAN VALUE. 101 

precious metal, wherever it may be. Being lost, it is 
not transmuted to sordid iron or worthless clay. 
She searches diligently until she finds it, because 
she does believe it to be always valuable. When 
she finds it, dimmed with dust and covered with 
rust, it needs only to be cleansed, not recast. The 
image and superscription of the great King is upon 
it, and always has been. 

A man loses a silly sheep, who strays from the 
flock into the desert. It runs hither and yon, and 
loses all sense of direction. It keeps itself alive on 
brackish water and desert scrub ; it is torn by bram- 
bles, and hunted by wolves ; but it remains a sheep. 
It is not transformed into a goat, much less into a 
jackal. The Divine Shepherd seeks it, because he 
knows it is of value. His motive is double : He 
pities its pain, and he cannot afford to lose it or 
its fleece. He leaves the ninety and nine, and 
traverses the desert till he finds it, and brings it 
home rejoicing. 

A man loses his son. The lad, from wantonness 
and a boy's unbridled thought of liberty, wanders 
into a far country. He squanders his life among 
harlots and swine. But no Circe transforms him 
into a pig. His Divine Father's blood is in his 
veins all the while, and his Father's love follows 
him through all his wanderings. Wanting him, the 
Father's content cannot be complete. When he 
" comes to himself," not when he is transformed 
into something else, he turns his face toward his 
Father's house. 



102 SONS OF GOD. 

Could Augustine or Calvin have written these 
parables ? No : they spring from Jesus' profound 
estimate of the value of man. 

His practice was like His theory. He associated 
habitually with the " common people." This phrase 
is persistently misapprehended. A sharp distinction 
is drawn in our minds between the rich, cultivated, 
educated class on the one hand, and the poor, squalid, 
and vicious class on the other ; and we think of these 
last as being the common people. This misses the 
meaning. Common people are average people. Those 
contemporaries of Jesus who were for any reason 
withdrawn from the common mass of humanity were 
withdrawn from Him. There always are such people. 
The possession of exceptional wealth will isolate a 
man. A certain kind of advanced education will do 
it. A feeling of religious exclusiveness will do it. 
So also will exceptional immorality, or confirmed, 
deliberate wrong-doing. Jesus associated with none 
of these. He could not do so without separating 
Himself from the mass of average humanity, — the 
" common people." Neither riches nor poverty shut 
Him out, so long as their possessors remained in 
touch with their kind. It was only when Dives shut 
his gate, and sat down, flower-garlanded, to a banquet 
with a few boon companions, that Jesus could not 
enter. But He dined again and again at rich men's 
houses, He had the entrSe of a rich man's garden, and 
a rich girl who could afford to break a costly chate- 
laine of alabaster above his head, was his chosen 
friend. Only those who withdrew themselves from 



JESUS' ESTIMATE OF HUMAN VALUE. 103 

their kind, shut themselves off from Him. He was 
concerned with men, and wherever humanity was 
left He was interested. He fraternized with the poor, 
for in them He saw humanity stripped to its lowest 
terms. He ate and drank with sinners, for in them 
He found humanity stripped still more bare, un- 
clothed with either goods or character. The common 
people heard Him gladly, because they recognized 
Him as one of themselves. 

" The man most man works best for man, 
Like God at Nazareth." 

I am quite alive to the objection which some urge 
to this whole way of thinking and speaking. They 
allege that it leaves out of sight, and indeed tends 
to obscure, the distinction between the " saved " and 
the " lost," between the regenerate and the unregen- 
erate, between the natural man and the spiritual 
man. They will allow what I have said, with some 
qualifications, to apply to the saints ; but they assert 
that other men absolutely, and even the saints 
naturally, are " as nothing, and worse than nothing, 
in the sight of God." 

This objection may, as it seems to me, be fairly 
answered in two ways. In the first place, it would 
be sufficient to say that what I have tried to set forth 
is clearly the teaching of Jesus ; and then leave to 
them to harmonize it with other truth in whatever 
way they see fit. 

But, beside that, it seems to me that the objection 
arises from a misconception of the facts of the situa- 



104 SONS OF GOD. 

tion, and a misapprehension of the Holy Scriptures. 
The distinction of natural and spiritual man is in- 
deed present in the Scriptures. But it is a classifica- 
tion which does not run between men, but through 
them ; that is to say, the same persons are at the 
same time both natural and spiritual. It is not the 
truth that some men are gods, and some are beasts ; 
but it is true that every man is compounded of God 
and brute. Salvation is the process of eradicating 
the brute, and extending the dominion of the divine 
part over the whole nature. 

The supreme work of Jesus has been, and is, to 
bring men into a hopeful temper. He does this by 
showing them what they are. This is what is needed 
practically. Men are deterred from entering upon 
the task of personal redemption from the bonds of 
sin by an antecedent despair. Their brute inherit- 
ance is so clamorous that they have forgotten that 
they are also gods. The great value of the Incarnation 
is the proof which it affords that God can in very 
deed dwell in human form. Wherever the great fact 
of the Incarnation has been received, man's conscious- 
ness of his own dignity has revived. His sense of 
kinship with God has asserted itself. The creature 
discovers that he was not made subject to vanity 
willingly, but by reason of Him who hath been under 
that subjection in hope. He begins, in this hope, to 
strive for deliverance from the bondage of corrup- 
tion into the glorious liberty of the sons of God ! 
In the presence of Jesus, men slowly discover that 
they are not worthless, and that they are not hopeless. 



JESUS 1 ESTIMATE OF HUMAN VALUE. 105 

If my hope of salvation lay only in my con- 
temptible craving for God's pity, I should despair 
in advance. But since I learn that God needs me 
as well as I him, I rest serenely in the certainty 
that God will, unless I hinder him, accomplish his 
own purpose. 

Jesus appeals with confidence to that instinct of 
men which has always responded whenever they have 
been induced to heed Him. He, and He alone, has 
found the long-closed door to men's innermost soul ; 
and such have found Him to be the very door through 
which they pass to God. 

" He that entereth in by the door is the shep- 
herd of the sheep. To him the porter openeth ; and 
the sheep hear his voice : and he calleth his own sheep 
by name, and leadeth them out. And when he put- 
teth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and 
the sheep follow him : for they know his voice. And 
a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from 
him ; for they know not the voice of strangers. 
Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door of the 
sheep. All that ever came before me are thieves and 
robbers : but the sheep did not hear them. I am the 
door : by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, 
and shall go in and out, and find pasture. The thief 
cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to de- 
stroy : I am come that they might have life, and that 
they might have it more abundantly. I am the good 
shepherd : the good shepherd giveth his life for the 
sheep. But he that is a hireling, and not the shepherd, 
whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, 



106 SONS OF GOD. 

and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth ; and the wolf catch- 
eth them, and scattereth the sheep. The hireling 
fleeth, because he is a hireling, and careth not for the 
sheep. I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, 
and am known of mine." 



IX. 

GOD'S LOVE THE MOTIVE IN 
REDEMPTION. 



IX. 



GOD'S LOVE THE MOTIVE IN REDEMPTION. 

fKatt. 3HHE. U- 

" Cfjen tfje ^fyuxims foent out, an& fjeltJ a council against fjfat, 
fjobi tfjeg tntgfjt fcestrojr ijitn." 
^ofjn HF. 9. 

" Jgc tfjat ijatfj seen tne Jjatfj seen tfje jFatfjcr ; an& fjofo safest tfjou 
if) en, SJjefo us tfje JFatfjer ? " 

The Incarnation is often thought of as an abstract 
theological dogma. All words which end in " tion " 
produce this effect upon the average mind. It is the 
termination which in English denotes abstraction, as 
" ness " does concreteness. Abstract propositions are 
most valuable; but they belong in a region where 
practical minds do not habitually move, or feel at 
home. People generally are not fond of doctrine. 
They regard it as the perquisite of specialists. They 
usually hold in high honor those men who are at 
home in it, but they wait themselves until the doctors 
have done with abstractions and bring out the prac- 
tical results. The doctrine of the Incarnation has 
been specially unfortunate in this regard. It involves 
of necessity the most transcendental of all possible 
ideas. • It has to do with the essential nature of God, 
with the constitution of the human soul, with meta- 
physics, logic, and philosophy. On this account it 
has been the theme of endless discussion and contro- 
versy. The every-day man is repelled by the very 

109 



110 SONS OF GOD. 

term, and is not very clear in his mind just what is 
meant by it. 

But, nevertheless, it is the central truth of Chris- 
tianity. The question, What is a Christian ? cannot 
be answered without taking account of it. The reli- 
gious motives and hopes of Christendom flow from 
it. And although it is true that hardly any can be 
altogether clear as to what the term denotes, even 
for himself, still nearly every one has a general notion 
of what it means. It is with this general idea alone 
that I intend to deal now. The simplest form of 
statement that I can think of is something like this : 
We believe that God has manifested Himself in the 
person of the man Jesus Christ. This is Jesus' own 
way of putting it. He asserts that any one who has 
seen Him has seen God. He asserts in various ways 
that He Himself is God, in the world upon an errand 
of mercy. By watching Him closely, therefore, we 
come to see what God's disposition, temper, way of 
thinking about men and dealing with them, really is. 
When one, then, thinks of Jesus as being really an 
incarnation of God, He becomes at once of the most 
absorbing interest ; for, when all is said, people would 
rather know about God than about any other thing 
in the universe. It is quite true that they very often 
show great lack of interest in religious questions and 
teachers, as compared with secular things and living 
men. But this is not because they are really not in- 
terested in the questions, but because they either do 
not believe that any answer to them is possible, or 
do not believe that the particular teacher who asks a 



GOD'S LOVE THE MOTIVE IN REDEMPTION. Ill 

hearing knows what the answer is. I think it is 
within the truth to say that ninety-nine men out of 
every hundred have a religion. There is a religious 
side to every man's life and nature. The religious 
faculty is as universal as is the faculty of reason or 
taste. It satisfies, or tries to satisfy, itself in a thou- 
sand ways. The savages' superstitions, the pagans' 
strange ceremonials of sacrifice and lustration, are 
but expressions of it. St. Paul declares that in every 
nation there have been those who have "felt after 
God, if haply they might find him." Among us it 
shows itself in many and strange ways. In one it is 
only a vague, formless apprehension; in another it 
is a constant, or a frequently recurring, self-disgust. 
In another the faculty seems to be extinct, but is 
found to be only quiescent until it is momentarily 
startled into consciousness by a sudden terror or blow 
in the presence of which a man involuntarily calls 
out : " Oh, my God ! " In yet another it takes the 
form of an arbitrary and eclectic code of personal 
morals, which he has slowly formulated for himself. 
There is something which he will not allow himself 
to do, even though he might gain by it. Every man 
keeps a virtue by him. In some little corner of his 
life there is a little place fenced off from himself ; 
that is his forbidden fruit, and he is generally stead- 
fast in his determination not to eat of it. Another 
great company, containing many whom we love to 
call our personal friends, show their religion by their 
high morality. They accept the code of ethics which 
obtains in the time and place where they have chanced 



112 SONS OF GOD. 

to be born, and steadfastly regulate their lives thereby. 
This is their religion. 

Now, we are in the habit of assuming that the 
Christian is in some way better off than the best of 
these. We assume that he has been, to some extent, 
let into the secret of God's will and purpose ; that 
while others know about God, he knows Him directly ; 
that while others are feeling after God, he has found 
Him. Is this true ? 

It is perfectly clear, that if it be true, it is a most 
astounding truth. Its practical importance cannot 
be over-estimated. If we could only see God, it 
would be an unspeakable relief, both to our moral 
and our intellectual natures. In the matter of right 
living, what would it not do for us ? I think the 
most pathetic sight in the world is the spectacle of 
men and women struggling on year after year after 
righteousness, without knowing why they do so, or 
whether their struggle will bring them to any real 
goal. I have known hundreds of such. They have 
struggled against the current of temptation within 
and without, from a dumb instinct. In some cases 
they are swept away despite their sturdy strokes. 
In some cases they seem after a time to become mor- 
ally exhausted, and sink. Others, again, go out of 
sight still swimming. But the pitiful thing is, that 
in no such case do they see the significance of their 
moral struggle or what is involved in it. What a 
stay and stimulus to them it would be to see God ! 
The Incarnation is the truth which they miss. It is 
the answer, and the only answer thus far, to some of 



GOD'S LOVE THE MOTIVE IN REDEMPTION. 113 

the most constant and imperious needs of men. The 
practical need is for a mediator between men and 
God — a tertium quid which will bring them into 
union. The truth is, that, apart from the Incarna- 
tion, the very word God is only an abstraction. It is 
doubtful whether any but the Christian is intellectu- 
ally justifiable in ascribing to God the qualities which 
men do so glibly. Is He good ? Setting Jesus aside, 
the answer is at least doubtful ! One can only hope 
so. But under the pressure of pain, and in the 
presence of " Nature's immoralities," one must doubt 
of it. Judging existence by what we can see of it, 
and without any revelation of whence it proceeds 
and whither it tends, one must remain doubtful of 
whether it is presided over by a good genius or a 
malevolent sprite, or whether it has any plan or pur- 
pose whatever. Nor do the observable facts of life 
yield up any clear answer to the question of the 
endurance of a human soul. There are some things 
which intimate immortality, but then there are just 
as many and as cogent considerations which point 
the opposite way. Indeed, the " God " who is con- 
structed by human reason out of the only material 
available, is a being powerless to engage a human 
affection, or, indeed, to awaken anything but the most 
languid interest. In point of fact, He does not do 
anything more than this. Did you ever know a man 
who eared nothing for the person of Jesus who had 
any real, vivid, personal interest in God ? I never 
did. 

The truth is, that if one will take the trouble to 



114 SONS OF GOD. 

trace up the various complex notions, which, in their 
combination, compose the accepted idea of God, he 
will find that they have proceeded from Jesus Christ. 
Men have looked at Him and seen the Father. 

They have seen a father. This is the characteris- 
tic of the conception of God which comes from Jesus. 
It forms itself not around the idea of greatness, or 
majesty, or mystery, but love. It thinks of God as 
a parent who has transmitted part of his own life to 
his numerous offspring. These children are scattered 
far and wide. Some are silly babes, and some are 
wayward sons. They have wandered far from their 
father's house, and for the most part have forgotten 
all about him. Myriads of them are living in pov- 
erty and pain. They have used up long ago the 
little portion of goods which fell to each one's share 
when they left their father's house, and to make it 
good they have been for many a century plundering 
and over-reaching one another. The weak and help- 
less ones are robbed, while the lusty and smart pile 
up heaps of treasure. From the whole mass a con- 
fused cry comes up to heaven. 

It is to this situation that the idea of " Salvation " 
addresses itself. But look closely at just what is 
this thing we call salvation. It is a movement, not 
of men toward God, but of God toward men. He 
comes to seek and to save. This is the element 
which has given such a tenacious vitality to Jesus' 
plan. He roots the process of salvation in the nature 
of God. We might do without God, but He cannot 
do without us. This is the fact which gave Jesus 



GOD'S LOYE THE MOTIVE IN REDEMPTION. 115 

such assured confidence of ultimate success. He 
was working with God. 

Let us open this thought a little. Why do men 
exist at all ? What did God make them for ? What 
is the final cause of creation ? The answer is stated 
in the central formula of Christianity, " I believe in 
God the Father; and in Jesus Christ His Son." 
That is to say, God's essential nature is such that 
He has not remained lonely. That instinct of propa- 
gation, the most imperious of all impulses in man, is 
also the dominant impulse in God ! He was beget- 
ting, and the Son was begotten from all eternity. 
But the Son is also " the first-born among many 
creatures." God will not sit solitary at the centre of 
an empty universe. If he were Power this might be, 
for the sense of power does not need to be either 
shared or admired in order to give satisfaction to 
its possessor. If He were Benevolence, Goodness, 
Truth, other sentient beings would not be a necessity 
to Him, for all these find complete gratification in 
merely existing. Jesus' description of God is, that 
He is Love. But Love, by its very nature, cannot 
exist without an object. So, from God's necessity for 
companionship springs Adam, "who was the son of 
God," and all his race. The rationale of Redemption 
is the same as that of Creation. It is rooted in the 
eternal fact that God's purpose must remain unful- 
filled until He brings back His children to His love. 
As Jesus phrases it : " It is not the will of your 
Father which is in heaven that one of these little 
ones should perish." Let me call to your mind again 



116 SONS OF GOD. 

that wonderful parable of the Prodigal Son. There 
are four scenes in the drama of a human soul. The 
first is a splendid and happy home, where an old man 
and his children live in peace and free interchange of 
affection. The second is a young man in torn and 
ragged silks and faded garlands, standing wistfully 
in a confused scene where pipers and swine, harlots 
and prodigals, jostle one another. The third is a ven- 
erable and sad father sitting, waiting wearily the 
home-coming of his child. The last is a great house, 
illuminated, from whose open doors and windows 
pours out the sound of music, feasting, and the sweet 
cries of love. 

The father keeps himself advised of his child's 
whereabouts through all his wanderings, and his love 
pursues him always. It cannot be but that the Eter- 
nal Father will follow every child through every turn 
and labyrinth of earth and hell. The Psalmist long 
ago had a fleeting glimpse of the truth, and left it 
upon record: " Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or 
whither shall I flee from thy presence ? If I ascend 
up into heaven, thou art there : If I make my bed 
in hell, thou art there. If I take the wings of the 
morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea ; 
even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right 
hand shall hold me." He who thinks of this sub- 
lime burst as proclaiming only God's greatness, 
misses the meaning. It is that the relation of the 
Father and the child is such that, in the very nature 
of things, it never can be sundered. 

But this pursuit by God of an errant child is com- 



GOD'S LOVE THE MOTIVE IN REDEMPTION. 117 

patible with sharp methods. Love can be cruel to be 
kind. God's love can brandish lightnings as scourges, 
and open before the prodigal sights of such abysses 
as shake the soul. It is a fearful thing to fall into 
the hands of the living God. The stem, but bracing, 
discipline of living is the means by which He brings 
His children home. But I cannot conceive of any 
mode, or place, or term of punishment which is not 
meant to be remedial. A place and mode of torment 
for human souls must be a necessary, but not a per- 
manent, institution in God's universe. Eternity can- 
not be predicated of evil without bringing hopeless 
confusion into all thinking. The last enemy which 
shall be destroyed is death. Ay ; it is only at long 
and weary last ; but destroyed it shall be. For it is 
not the will of God that even one of these little ones 
shall perish. And God fulfils His will in many ways. 
Salvation, then, is God's process of bringing his 
children back to Himself. It must be borne in mind 
that we are dealing here with things which cannot 
be forced, not even by God Himself. The old 
legend which tells of Julian the apostate lying 
wounded and dying in the desert, flinging up a 
handful of sand like a vanquished gladiator in 
the arena, and crying, " Oh, Nazarene, Thou hast 
conquered ! " misconceives the very spirit of Christi- 
anity. God does not win, and will not have, victories 
thus. God is a Christian. He overcomes evil with 
good. His formula is, " My son, give Me thine heart." 
Anything less than this He will not have. He would 
win His children as the maiden is won to blissful 



118 



SONS OF GOD. 



surrender to her lover, or as the strong man is bound 
in the cords of love. 

Why do we so confidently assert all this about 
God? Because we see Him in the Nazarene. By 
walking with the Son we come to see the Father. 
We find God present and rejoicing in human loves at 
Cana; present, grieving with human woe, at Nain; 
present, and pitying human weakness and sin, before 
the women taken in adultery ; present, and denoun- 
cing human selfishness in the Scribes and Pharisees ; 
present, and gathering little children in his arms ; 
weeping over human folly, as he looks from the 
mountain shoulder upon Jerusalem ; eagerly grasping 
at the faintest proffer of divine love by the thief 
upon the cross; pleading in extenuation of mortal 
sin, that, " they know not what they do ; " passing out 
of sight to the Father with divine benediction on His 
lips ; disappearing into the heavens wherein the 
Eternal Heart of the universe throbs in sympathy 
with human need. 



X. 

PILGRIMS AND STRANGERS. 



PILGRIMS AND STRANGERS. 

E $et- HE, 11, 

" JBearlg Mobetr, JE bmttty gou as strangers an* pilgrims, abstain 
from flesfjlg lusts, foljidj foar against tfje souL" 

The fundamental question in Ethics is, Why should 
I do right ? But the pressing practical question is, 
Sow shall I do so ? St. Peter approaches this second 
question from a strange point of view. He appeals 
to a very unusual motive to produce right living. I 
will ask you, after a little, to look at it steadfastly. 
But first, I want to place before you some of the 
common arguments for purity of life. 

Everybody acknowledges that the problem is more 
important than anything else, more important than 
right thinking or right believing. " His creed cannot 
be wrong whose life is in the right," is the way the 
secular world states it. Where and how to find a 
sound basis for morals is the thing which engages the 
attention of preacher, priest, social reformer, states- 
man, philosopher, and man of science. An essay 
published some years ago under the title, " A Scien- 
tific Basis of Morals," attracted the attention of two 
continents. How shall men be enabled to live 
rightly ? This is the question of the age. We will 

121 



122 SONS OF GOD. 

withhold for the present the answer which Religion 
gives. The secular answer is, " Righteousness comes 
by knowledge." That is to say, sin and crime are 
folly. The universe is so constituted that sin brings 
suffering in its train. If men were only wise enough 
they would be righteous. In point of fact, they are 
ignorant, short-sighted, and therefore unjust and 
incontinent. It is out of this feeling grows the high 
estimate which is generally placed upon education. 
Think of the way in which that idea is exploited. 
In the United States the machinery for education is 
probably more costly, more efficient, and certainly 
is more highly valued, than the institutions provided 
for any other purpose. The State may be remiss in 
laying, collecting, and expending many a tax, but not 
the school tax. People differ politically about every- 
thing else, but not about that. They all hold educa- 
tion in the highest value. The schoolhouse is 
everywhere, and the college follows hard after it. 
Those who have been fortunate enough to secure for 
themselves a university education are enthusiastic 
just now to extend it to the masses. It is seriously 
proposed to make attendance at school compulsory 
upon all children, under penalty of fine and imprison- 
ment of the parent who is at fault. I ask you to 
notice carefully the reason invariably urged for all 
this. It is not that education makes men happy. No 
one would think of defending it upon the ground 
that knowledge is pleasure. The reason alleged is, 
that knowledge produces goodness. "Education 
makes men good citizens ; " that is, it leads men to 



PILGRIMS AND STRANGERS. 123 

discharge rightly the duties which belong to them 
as individuals, and the obligations which bind them 
to their fellows. This theory has been deliberately 
acted upon now for nearly a century ? Is it true ? 

Many seriously question it. I doubt whether the 
practical result has been such as to satisfy anybody. 
I think people are slowly beginning to see the truth, 
that knowledge has no moral quality at all. It 
neither advances nor retards virtue. Upon the whole, 
it probably makes the conditions of virtue more 
favorable, but it has in it no quality which can pro- 
duce righteousness. A generation which depends 
upon it to produce morality will come to fatal grief. 
And this is just as true of social, or political, or 
economical knowledge, as it is of purely physical 
science. 

The Church herself has not been free from the 
prevailing delusion. She also has gone largely into 
the business of " education," and with the same 
purpose in view. If a thoughtful man steps into a 
Sunday-school supply-store, for instance, he will find 
much food for thought. He will be bewildered by 
the machinery for instruction which he finds about 
him. He will find that all the stores of sacred learn- 
ing have been ransacked, and their contents arranged 
and packed for easy distribution among all people. 
Lives of Christ, written from every conceivable point 
of view ; illustrated books of the fauna and flora of 
the Holy Land ; libraries by the ton, and newspapers 
by the mile, for Sunday schools; charts, pictures, 
handbooks, maps, class-books, text-books, cards, toys, 



124 SONS OF GOD. 

puzzles, in a word, every imaginable and unimagin- 
able device for the easy, quick, and sure distribution 
of knowledge about religion. Of course, the rationale 
of it all is evident. It is believed that by imparting 
knowledge, goodness will be secured. In this belief 
myriads are toiling painfully and patiently week by 
week to educate old men and maidens, young men 
and children, into the love and service of God. Now, 
I would not speak slightingly of this. I am not 
worthy to loose the shoe-latchet of any one of thou- 
sands who labor thus. So far as all this activity is 
the result of pure religion, it is worthy of all honor ; 
but so far as it is looked to as a cause of that same, 
it will largely fail. The reason is evident. There 
is a gap between knowledge and conduct which only 
something else can bridge. Our Lord forestalled it 
all. " Men will run to and fro, and knowledge will be 
increased : but when He comes, will He find faith 
upon the earth? " You will observe that this knowl- 
edge of which I have been speaking is one, all of 
the ingredients of which are gathered from this world. 
Now, the contention of Christianity is, that the 
materials are not present here from which to con- 
struct right conduct. Or, to put it differently, so 
long as one confines himself to considerations drawn 
from this world, there is no sufficient reason to be 
found why he should do right, and no sufficient 
motive to induce him to do so. It is for this rea- 
son that the apostle exhorts men " as pilgrims and 
strangers," that they should refrain from fleshly 
lusts. What he did say has been often misunder- 



PILGRIMS AND STRANGERS. 125 

stood. Bunyan's " Pilgrim " has misled thousands. 
It is often thought that the Christian notion is, that 
one becomes a " pilgrim and a stranger " by adopting 
the service of Christ; that his profession estranges 
him from his fellows and the world in which he has 
heretofore felt himself at home. The Church is 
thought of as a little band who have voluntarily 
bound packs upon their backs, took staves in their 
hands, and gone away into a strange country. This 
is but a travesty of the profound truth. The 
apostle asserts that all men are in the same case. 
They do not become strangers to life by entering the 
service of God; but they are so always, and in the 
nature of the case. Shakspeare saw it clearly, as 
was his fashion. " Man is a being of large discourse, 
looking before and after." He is larger than the 
world in which he lives. If he shrink to its dimen- 
sions, he does so at the expense of his essential 
nature. Christianity has often been jeered at by 
practical men as being "other-worldly." It is so. 
This is its distinction. It looks outside this world 
for some of its most potent motives and most valued 
consolations. It remembers that here a man " hath 
no continuing city ; " that " he cometh up and is cut 
down like the grass;" that "he continueth not in 
one stay;" that he is a pilgrim passing through a 
country in which he is closely concerned for the 
time, but which is only one stage of a far longer 
journey. This is not the place to show why we 
believe this to be a scientifically accurate view of the 
facts of life. But it is the place to say that this 



126 SONS OF GOD. 

" pilgrim view " is not any unwholesome sentimental- 
izing of a melancholy Jacques, but a broader, more 
worthy, and far more moral view of life than its 
opposite. The late Professor Clifford ventured to do, 
and evidently with sincerity of purpose, what very 
few have : he accused Christianity of being distinctly 
immoral in its effect. He asserted that its habit of 
withdrawing men's attention from the things which 
may be seen and known, and directing them with 
such persistence to the things which are unseen and 
cannot be known, tended to weaken the only motives 
out of which practical morality can flow. He argued 
that this world will be best administered when men's 
whole attention and energy are given to it, undis- 
tracted by considerations drawn from any other. I 
think many others have vaguely the same thought, 
as is shown by their readiness to bend to the authority 
of human conventions, and their slowness in per- 
mitting their conduct to be regulated by any thought 
of future or divine things. Against this I assert my 
belief that right living is neither safe nor reasonable, 
unless it be inspired and fortified by belief in unseen 
realities. The facts bear this out. Ask any one to 
point to the most shining example of human good- 
ness of which there is any record. All votes will be 
cast for the same person who found no one to take 
up his challenge, " Which of you convinceth me of 
sin ? " But then He was the one who was domi- 
nated most absolutely by the over-world. " I came 
out from God ; and I go to the Father." And who 
will lay any thing to the charge of His first elect, the 



PILGRIMS AND STRANGERS. 127 

earliest generation of disciples ? Can any group of 
men and women be found of more brilliant and 
striking goodness ? Where will the observer go to 
find displayed better virtue, charity, peace, gentle- 
ness, kindness, love, fortitude, patience, heroism, 
than to them? But this was while and because 
the spell of the Divine Pilgrim was fresh upon them. 
They looked for a better country, even an heavenly. 
Their citizenship was elsewhere. They believed in 
God, and loved him ; hoped for heaven ; feared the 
damnation of hell ; were ware of their adversary 
the Devil ; prayed and fasted and gave alms ; and 
has the world ever seen, not better Christians, but 
better men or women ? The Christian looks outside 
for the approval of his conduct, and, therefore, is not 
misled by sophistical courts such as exist in this 
world. 

But let us try this truth by a more direct, immedi- 
ate test. Let us watch a soul in the actual process 
of moral struggle. The question is of sufficient 
importance to warrant us in using a case laid bare to 
me in the confessional. Here is a man who has 
sinned, not once, but again and again. But his moral 
nature has cried out every time it has been out- 
raged. The offence is not one which, like envy, 
wrath, malice, shows a diseased conscience. The sin 
is physical. He declares that it does not involve his 
better self. It is a rebellion of the members against 
the law of the mind. He has gone over the whole 
matter with himself a hundred times. He has said to 
himself, in extenuation, that " the offence is personal, 



128 SONS OF GOD. 

and tends in no way to injure society; it harms no 
one ; it may be but a physical idiosyncrasy ; he is no 
more responsible for it than he would be for the 
unequal gait resulting from a deformed leg ; his case 
is exceptional ; God, knowing all the circumstances, 
will judge him by other laws than those established 
for others ; the other compartments of his moral 
nature are sound, and will keep him afloat, though 
this one be broken up." Now, I ask in all candor, 
why are not any or all of these pleas sufficient? 
Why does his soul still cry out for deliverance ? He 
has violated no human law. He has not disturbed 
any social order. From the secularist point of view 
his moral agony is sheer folly. What shall I say 
to him ? What can I say that is more nearly true to 
the absolute reality of things than this : " I beseech 
you, as a pilgrim and a stranger, abstain from fleshly 
lusts I" As a pilgrim and a stranger. He is 
sojourning temporarily in a material existence which 
will subdue him to itself if he will allow. It is as 
relentless as the law of gravitation. There is no 
force in the whole material or psychical universe 
which will avail to counteract it. What he needs is 
to realize that he is encompassed about with a great 
cloud of witnesses ; that the outcry of his moral 
nature, under the stress of physical defilement, is for 
him the voice of God: that "God hath set eternity in 
the heart of every man ; " that moral actions involve 
consequences which stretch away beyond the stage 
across which he is just now walking. It is only 
when one sets conduct in the light of eternity that it 



PILGRIMS AND STRANGERS. 129 

can be seen in its true proportions. He who refuses 
to set the life that now is side by side with the life 
which is to come, will fail disastrously to order it 
aright. 

It is hard to see how common sanity can miss this 
truth. Who would fancy that a mode of existence 
which is fitting during a week's voyage across the 
ocean would be fitting for a stable community ashore ? 
Who can imagine that, taking all things together, 
men will really adopt the same code of conduct 
whether they believe the span of their existence to 
be fourscore years, or whether they believe them- 
selves destined to a continuous immortality ? From 
here emerges the potent force which produces Chris- 
tian righteousness. Christianity believes the soul to 
have a long and noble history. It comes from God, 
and goes to " the heavenlies." It dwells here, like 
Israel did in the wilderness. There is enough in the 
life to fill the years full. It is of the deepest inter- 
est and significance. There is enough to be learned 
and to be done to engage all energies. But it is not 
final, and cannot be treated as final without becoming 
meaningless. 

The Christian society has often been charged with 
an evil indifference to human welfare as such. Social 
and political reformers have often blamed the Church 
for holding aloof and leaving them to carry out their 
projects unaided. Christians, they say, are so busy 
"saving their souls," or " keeping the Church 
pure " in doctrine or order, that they have no 
time for, and no interest in, humanitarian labors. The 



130 SONS OF GOD. 

reproach has not been altogether undeserved. One 
who loves the Church is compelled at times to hang 
his head in shame at her supineness and her selfish- 
ness. But these have been the times at which she 
has been faithless to the spirit of her Master. Besides 
that, it is to be remembered that there are a thousand 
projects for the good of humanity in which the mem- 
bers of Christ's flock must work as individuals, where 
the Church in her organized capacity is not fitted to 
act. Her machinery is not adjusted primarily to 
carry forward reforms, but to produce and conserve 
in individuals the spirit which leads to work for hu- 
manity. In this spirit Christians have never been 
lacking. Indeed, it would not be extravagant to say 
that they have furnished the membership and the 
leaders for every movement for human weal which 
has justified itself by its results. In proportion as 
they have realized the shortness and uncertainty of 
human life, they have become the more solicitous to 
remove stumbling-blocks out of the path of those 
who will follow them. It would not be too much to 
say, that it is this sense of brotherhood in a common 
destiny which has caused in Christendom the innu- 
merable alleviations in the pain of living. Pagans do 
nothing of the kind. Professor Drummond, in his 
delightful book on Tropical Africa, points out that 
all Africa is criss-crossed by countless footpaths. 
They lead in every direction, and they are all crooked. 
A stone is in the way, or a limb falls across the 
path, and the first savage who comes along goes 
around it. It never occurs to him to remove it in the 






PILGRIMS AND STRANGERS. 131 

interest of the next traveller. The next comer steps 
around it also, and a permanent bend is made in the 
path. They have no sense of human solidarity. 
Where the spirit of Christ has gained a lodgement 
men have come to think of those who come after 
themselves. He " makes the paths straight." Jesus 
pours maledictions upon them who place stumbling- 
blocks in the path of human life. He passed through 
it Himself, and found it perplexing, painful. He 
rolled away the great stone which blocked up its exit, 
and shut out the view of what might lie beyond. 
Through the triumphant gateway out of which He 
passed to glory streams back along the path an illu- 
mination to light the feet and guide the way of pil- 
grims following ; and they are sustained and inspired 
by the song which they hear of " Peace on earth to 
men of good will." 



XI. 

THE IMMANENT GOD. 



XI. 



THE IMMANENT GOD. 

2Lufte S17E3L 20, 21. 

" "EnU foijen fje bias UcmarttJetr of tfje Pharisees, fofjcn tfje ftmgtiom 
of &oti sfjaulti come, fje ansfoerefc tfjcm anfc sattr, &fje kingdom of 
®rot» cometf} not foitfj observation : J^ettljer sfjall tfyeg sag, Eo fjire ! 
or, lo tijere ! for, befjottr, tfje kingdom of &o& is bntfjtn jrou." 

The time when a child " finds out Santa Claus " 
is a moment of considerable peril to that child's 
moral nature. He is apt to resent having been 
duped, and to remain for a time thereafter in a scep- 
tical frame of mind. He is all the more resentful 
because he has been duped through his affections, 
and by those whom he loves and trusts. If their 
testimony is not trustworthy, he reasons in his child- 
ish way, whose is ? Later on he finds out that he 
had not really been deceived. The love from whence 
came his cherished toys and presents was a real thing. 
In accommodation to his childish mind, it was person- 
ified, and named Santa Claus. While he understood 
as a child, the great fact of human love could only 
reach him in the concrete way in which children 
apprehend. When he became a man, and put away 
childish things, he put away his childish ideal of the 
rubicund gift-bringer, and put in place of him the 
affection which he found diffused among his fellows. 

135 



136 SONS OF GOD. 

This is a parable, and, like all parables, must not be 
pressed with too much detail. But I think it fairly 
represents the change through which men's minds 
are just now passing as to the way in which they 
conceive of God. A general way of thinking about 
God, which has obtained ever since there has been 
any record of human thought, shows signs, in our 
time, of being abandoned, or, to speak more accu- 
rately, outgrown. The change is attended with grave 
peril to both faith and morals ; but it is inevitable, and 
when it shall have been completed will be found to 
be good. Let me try to state just what is the concep- 
tion of God which is passing away. 

It thinks of God as an infinitely good, just, and 
powerful person, who has His seat outside the universe. 
He is self-contained and impassible. In His essential 
being He is so little engaged with the material or sen- 
tient universe that its passing away would not disturb 
Him more than the vanishing of a dream or the pass- 
ing of a fancy would a human mind. For His own 
pleasure He has fashioned the heavens and the earth, 
projected them into time and space, and set them 
spinning. From time to time, in ways and for 
reasons which cannot be calculated upon, He makes 
incursions, incalculable irruptions, into the world. 
These visitations are irregular, extraordinary, attended 
with, and shown by, mighty signs and wonders. But 
ordinarily he remains in the heavens, and allows the 
world to proceed by fixed laws and processes which 
he established at the beginning. His interference at 
any time is a miracle. He does interfere at times, 



THE IMMANENT GOD. 137 

being moved thereto by love or by divine indignation. 
He comes to one here and there with a benediction, 
and to whole communities now and again with a 
curse. He is thought of as the Great Artificer. 
Paley's watch is the symbol of his mode of acting. 
He monopolizes in himself an absolute goodness, so 
that mankind shivers in moral nakedness. He is 
self-conscious, and therefore to be pleased with ado- 
ration. He is angry, and to be appeased by those who 
know what the incense is which is grateful to Him, 
and where it may be found. He waits serenely while 
the generations of men are born, run through their 
little lives, and die. When the tree of humanity shall 
have dropped the last of its fruit He will have them 
all gathered up and sorted. The good will be care- 
fully preserved for his delectation, and the bad will 
be cast into the jakes of the universe so as to be out 
of his sight. The Church is a little company of 
men who have been wise enough to discover who and 
what He is ; to adjust their lives to His arbitrary 
requirements, and thus secure for themselves safety 
and an assurance of continued existence in felicity 
when the universe shall be presently broken up. As 
the corporation which holds the monopoly of spirit- 
ual knowledge in the earth, it has the right to govern 
men. It formulates the truth which has been given 
to it at certain known times and places, holds it as a 
" deposit," to which it has no power to add, and from 
which it has no right to take away. In a word, it 
conceives of the world as having been mechanically 
created from without ; as mechanically governed from 



138 SONS OF GOD. 

without ; as having been thrown out of its original 
harmonious movement by a malign influence from 
without ; as redeemed and rescued by a complex de- 
vice introduced from without. It stands with its 
back to the facts of existence, looks away off into 
space, and inquires, " When shall the Kingdom of 
God appear ? And what shall be the sign of its com- 
ing?" It is bewildered and irritated at the repty, 
"The Kingdom of God is within you; it cometh 
not with observation." He who says, " Lo, here it 
is ! or, Lo, there it is ! " shows thereby that he does 
not understand what the thing is for which he looks. 
But to change a habit of thought which has be- 
come rooted and fixed by ages upon ages of custom 
and inheritance requires also centuries of time. I 
think it is true that only now is the Church begin- 
ning on any large scale to comprehend some of 
the profound teachings of Jesus. " The Law was a 
schoolmaster to bring men to Christ ; " but that 
schoolmaster did not lay down his rod and horn- 
book by any means as early as is usually assumed. 
He is still at work, and numbers his pupils by the 
myriad. Two things have happened, however, with- 
in late centuries, to bring his pupils to a truer thought 
about God and his kingdom. These are the Refor- 
mation in the sixteenth century and the Doctrine of 
Evolution in the nineteenth. They both produced 
temporary scepticism, but they were both enormous 
steps forward in the knowledge of God. The Refor- 
mation was an appeal from what claimed to be the 
voice of God speaking from outside to the voice of 



THE IMMANENT GOD. 139 

God speaking from within the soul. It was an appeal 
from " Authority " to " private judgment." But its 
significance lay in its tacit assertion that the moral 
judgment of men is trustworthy. It asserted that 
the Kingdom of God is within, and must be sought 
there if anywhere. This is why those who opposed 
it did so so earnestly, and believed that thus they 
were doing God service. The central principle of 
the Reformation seemed to them to be idolatry. It 
was an attempt to find God in a place where he had 
never been looked for, and in a place where they had 
been taught that only unclean things dwell. It was 
an assertion of the indwelling of the Spirit of God 
in man. The truth gained ground but slowly, for 
all the habits of religious thought and action were 
opposed to it. Indeed, it was but a little while until 
the statement of the truth itself became a fetich 
before which the Reformed Church demanded pros- 
tration under penalty. "Justification by Faith" 
quickly passed from being the statement of an inner 
principle to be an outward and mechanical law ; but 
the essential truth had been seen, and has never been 
lost to sight. It has operated throughout Western 
Christendom to bring out into consciousness the 
truth that men are the sons of God, and as such are 
immediately and always in contact with the Father. 

The Doctrine of Evolution has also powerfully 
broken up the notion of God's outward and mechani- 
cal relation to nature and man. Indeed, it has smitten 
that notion to its death. It has rendered impossible 
many of the most generally accepted ideas about reli- 



140 SONS OF GOD. 

gion ; for example, the notion about creation, Provi- 
dence, and prayer. It is teaching men to look for 
God, not in the " violations of natural law," but in 
the movement of the natural order itself. This change 
of habit is not easy. Some cannot make it at all ; 
some rage against the doctrine itself as a satanic 
deception to snare men's souls. The rage is idle and 
useless; more than that, it is dangerous: but it is 
not difficult to understand and to sympathize with 
those who feel it. They seek to heighten the idea of 
God as a creator and ruler by representing Him as 
working from without upon intractable materials, and 
subduing them to Himself. We think of these same 
materials moving forward slowly but surely toward 
the shape and purpose which is theirs in God. The 
processes are themselves divine. In the movements 
of the universe, and not in its creation or its interrup- 
tions, is God seen. Suppose one had been present as 
a spectator at the " creation," what would he have 
seen ? He would not have seen the divine form nor 
heard the divine voice any more then than now ; he 
would have seen matter and life moving seemingly by 
their own volition from chaos into order ; he would 
have discerned there, not the person, but the garments, 
of God. If he would see Him face to face, he must 
then, as always, look within. The Doctrine of Evo- 
lution is swiftly and surely setting men to think of 
God, not as a remote and inaccessible personage, but 
as the Father who dwells and works in the same 
house with His children. It fills with divinity all 
the processes of life ; for it begins to see that they are 



THE IMMANENT GOD. 141 

not aimless, but lead to a definite goal. It looks at 
the whole creation groaning and travailing in a com- 
mon pain, and sees in the travail itself the hope of 
the final issue in the sons of God. It waits for 

" That long-drawn divine event, 
Toward which the whole creation moves." 

It does not ask, Who shall ascend into heaven ? that 
is, to bring down the Christ from above ; or, Who 
shall descend into hell? that is, to bring up the 
Christ again from the dead: for it knows that the 
Word is nigh us, even in our mouth and in our heart. 
Says Cardinal Newman, " If I looked into a mirror, 
and failed to see my face, I should have the same 
feeling as if, when looking at the world, I failed to 
see God." 

Now, this new way, which beyond question is 
Christ's way, of looking for God in the things which 
we see, is bringing about some tremendous results. 
First of all, it is attracting a new amount and a new 
kind of attention to Jesus Himself. As a truer esti- 
mate of humanity has gained ground, men have be- 
come more ready to see God in the person of a man. 
It is a significant fact, that all the " Lives of Christ " 
have been written since the Reformation, and far the 
most and best of them within the last half century. 
Before that there was a feeling that there was some- 
thing unworthy in the attempt to examine closely 
the human side of the Divine Man. To do so would 
have the effect to bring Him within the borders of 
that human life which was thought of as destitute of 



142 SONS OF GOD. 

all divinity. Now all that is changed. His life has 
been traced step by step with painstaking exhaustive- 
ness. All His human relationships have been eagerly 
studied. The result is, that He is seen in the very act 
of increasing day by day in wisdom and stature, and 
in favor with God and men ; and as the man stands 
out more clearly before us, the God becomes the 
more unmistakable. Men look at Him, and then 
turn to look anew at themselves, and are filled with 
wonder, humiliation, amazement, and hope. They 
discern the Kingdom of God within them where they 
had fancied that slavery or anarchy held possessions. 
The result is to change their ideas and their lives. 
Sin is no longer a violation of an arbitrary statute 
enacted by an absentee ruler, but the breach of a 
vital law. Prayer is no longer the asking of favors 
of a powerful person, -fahose good-will or existence 
may be doubted if the favor be not granted, but the 
effort to bring about an internal harmony with that 
movement of things which is known to be of God. 
Righteousness is no longer a series of actions to 
which safety and reward are attached, but a personal 
adjustment to the movements of the kingdom of which 
one forms a part. The Church becomes a divine 
institution, not because its structure is imposed from 
without, but because it is the body which is formed 
by, and which protects and gives expression to, the 
divine life which is within. 

I know there are some to whom this way of speak- 
ing is incomprehensible, and some to whom it seems 
untrue. I hardly need to say that I think it to be 



THE IMMANENT GOD. 143 

true, and that they are in error. They do not think 
that great events, great forces, great institutions, 
like God, Creation, and the Church, are properly 
introduced into the world without a marked shifting 
and change of scene as each is presented. They 
expect the kingdom of God to come with observa- 
tion. It never has appeared so, and cannot ; but its 
obligation is none the less, because it comes unseen 
and unsuspected. The facts and forces of human 
life cannot be parcelled out and labelled " natural," 
and "supernatural." In Him we live and move and 
have our being. Had the Ten Commandments no 
Divine sanction for the generations which preceded 
Moses ? Has the human conscience no Divine quality 
because the rudiments of a moral sense are discern- 
ible in a dog? Is a man's kinship to God on the 
one side rendered illegitimate, because on the other he 
is related to the brutes that perish ? Is the Divinity 
of Jesus impossible, because his members were fash- 
ioned, while as yet there were none of them, in the 
womb of a woman ? Is human government vacated 
of Divine obligation, because it is achieved and en- 
acted by men ? Is the earth not of God's creation, 
because we have learned to read the story of its 
slow becoming off the rocky pages of its strata? 
Is the Church not of Divine origin and obligation, 
because the steps and processes through which it has 
come into its shape can be traced ? I am persuaded 
that a large part of the " evidences " for the truth of 
our religion, which have been built up with such 
labor and patience, are worse than thrown away. 



144 SONS OF GOD. 

They are attempts to say " Lo ! here is the kingdom, 
or lo! there." They offer to vindicate the super- 
natural by pointing out its unlikeness to the natural. 
I am convinced that the immediate future of Chris- 
tianity is dependent upon the recognition of the 
truth, that we live in the midst of an order which is 
at once Divine and human, both natural and super- 
natural. The attempt to segregate holy from com- 
mon, sacred from secular, must be abandoned. The 
Divine origin and authority of the Church and its 
institutions will never be vindicated by emphasizing 
its separation from the world. Nor will it be by 
tracing up her title-deeds in the spirit of an attorney 
or conveyancer. Its identity is not to be determined 
that way. Humanity, under the operation of the 
spirit of Jesus, is slowly producing righteousness. 
This righteousness becomes organic in the Church. 
The spirit produces the body, and not otherwise. 
The spirit of goodness is streaming in from a thou- 
sand unsuspected sources, and under a thousand un- 
suspected forms. It is too subtile for identification, 
and too large for definition. 

One great excellence of Christ's way of thinking 
about His kingdom is, that it makes one easy in the 
presence of good men and good deeds which are not 
visibly related to the Church. The old way did not. 
It could not deal with goodness outside the organiza- 
tion. It drew the pernicious distinction between 
religion and morality, and denied the latter any 
Divine quality. Christ values goodness too highly 
to miscall it wherever it appears. " He that is not 



THE IMMANENT GOD. 145 

against me is for me." All the philanthropies, the 
sciences, the aspirations, the devotion, the charity, in 
a word, all the goodness of men, He lays claim to. 
They are His. The Church should be no less avid to 
claim them. There is no fear of her " purity " suf- 
fering. She possesses that spirit of life which takes 
up, and moulds to its own purposes, all human good- 
ness. If she would become conterminous with the 
" kingdom of God," as she is meant to be, she must 
become as catholic as was the Son of man. She 
must claim for her own, absorb, and utilize every 
movement toward righteousness. She must not be 
surprised or unbelieving when she hears from the 
most unsuspected quarter the cry, " Behold, the bride- 
groom cometh ! " 



XII. 

THE EARTH HELPED THE WOMAN. 



XII. 

THE EAETH HELPED THE WOMAN. 

»eb. HE. 16 : 

"Efje eartfj fjelpetJ tfje toman." 

This text is taken from the most stupendous 
drama ever conceived. Even the " Paradise Lost " 
is petty beside it ; its actors move mechanically upon 
an artificial stage. But in the vision of the seer at 
Patmos real beings perform real parts. One may 
frankly say that it is often impossible to make out 
the movement. One is bewildered at the prodigality 
of life and event which defiles before him. I think 
one has much the same feeling of perplexity in the 
Book of Revelation that he has at the spectacle of 
existence itself. Its complexity and seeming con- 
tradictoriness puzzle and often repel him. But this 
is the result, not of any lack of reality, but from 
its immensity. I do not propose to try to interpret 
even a single act in this Divine Tragedy ; that is, to 
try to fit it to some human movement to which it 
may correspond, but to hold up a single mighty 
truth which comes out incidentally. But to see it 
I must rehearse a fragment of the drama. 

John saw a great wonder in the heavens. A 
shining, dazzling woman, clothed with sunlight as 

149 



150 SONS OF GOD. 

with a garment, and bedecked with the stars as with 
a coronet of jewels, descending majestically upon the 
fair earth, and immediately bringing forth her first- 
born child. The scene shifts, the sunlight fades into 
a tawny gloom, and a great foul, fierce dragon comes 
flapping to the earth, pursuing the gracious woman 
whom in her extremity he would devour. The 
woman snatches up her child and flees into the 
wilderness from his presence. The dragon, at fault 
in the chase, pours from his mouth a mighty flood of 
water which spreads abroad and threatens to drown 
the woman and her child in their hiding-place. 
Then the earth itself comes to the rescue. It opens 
its mighty lips and swallows up the perilous flood. 
The baffled dragon, after a time of impotent rage, 
lies down and dies. 

The dragon is the personified spirit of evil; the 
earth is the earth ; the woman is the Chtirch of God. 
When I say the Church, I mean something which is 
not now anywhere to be seen, or ever has been, but 
that ideal society which is meant to contain within 
itself all righteousness. No organized society has 
ever yet been identical altogether with the Church 
in the true meaning of the word. The Church, 
when complete, will equal the Kingdom of God. 
But no organization as yet has existed, of which it 
could truly be said that either in extent or in quality 
it fulfilled this definition. The woman and her man- 
child represent the incoming tide of righteousness. 

The " Earth " is that complex aggregate of men 
and things, in and among which the forces of moral 



THE EARTH HELPED THE WOMAN. 151 

good and evil have their play. It embraces all with 
which men have to do, — things physical and things 
spiritual ; circumstances, events, society, natural 
affections, impulses, actions, in short, the sum total 
of the myriad entities which make up and environ 
human life. 

Now, the noteworthy thing in the text before us is, 
that it represents the earth to be by nature and dis- 
position on the side of the woman, and against the 
dragon. " The earth helped the woman." That is 
to say, the natural forces of life are on the side of 
the good and opposed to the evil. 

I think the opposite notion is very generally en- 
tertained. Natural and evil are thought of as synony- 
mous terms. The life which now is is contrasted with 
the life which shall be, as wrong is set over against 
right. We are largely under the domination of a 
pagan conception of life. I have at other times 
dwelt upon the ways and the time in which this 
unworthy idea found its way into Christian thought 
and theology. I now only speak of the fact. We 
call ourselves "vile earth and miserable sinners." 
We speak of "this naughty world." We uncon- 
sciously apply to life itself that sense of moral 
ill-desert which we feel as moral beings. We think 
of the earth as being under the domination of the 
Devil. We conceive of the world in which we live 
as being alert to thwart righteous motives, to in- 
snare the spirit, - and bring it to disaster, or, at the 
very best, as being a dead weight to be overcome by 
the striving of the soul. 



152 SONS OF GOD. 

Is this moral estimate of the world true to the 
facts ? In reply, I would ask you seriously to think 
of these following things, — 

(1.) The strange fact that goodness steadily in- 
creases upon the earth. That this is the fact, any 
one must see who will look candidly at any two 
points of history widely removed from one another. 
He will see that a constant, though irregular move- 
ment toward better things is the rule, and has been 
during the whole period during which anything is 
known about the earth at all. This movement is 
far more strikingly evident in those places where the 
influence of Jesus has been at work ; but it is also 
evident everywhere. This ought not to be so, on 
the current theory of life. If the " world, the flesh, 
and the devil" be really conjoined in a trinity of 
evil they must be, to all practical purpose, omnip- 
otent. A mighty movement toward better things 
is the idea of Jesus. He looks for it confidently. 
He points to the forces which operate toward it. No 
one can see the growth of Christianity without a 
certain feeling of surprise and bewilderment. It 
ought not to have grown, as it would seem. What 
hindered the dragon from devouring the Man-child in 
His helpless infancy ? His life and doctrine were in 
the face of the powers which held possession at the 
time. Apparently the whole drift of thought, cus- 
tom, law, habit, tradition, convention, self-interest, 
were opposed to Him. His life was a stumbling- 
block, His words were folly. Yet against these 
all His kingdom has come up as a mighty storm 



THE EARTH HELPED THE WOMAN. 153 

gathers against the surface winds, as the sea flows 
into and fills the bays and gulfs against the currents 
of all the mighty rivers. Why ? A common answer 
is : Because a more potent opposing force has been 
introduced, which beats back and reverses the natural 
movements of life and man. I think the answer is 
faulty. It is quite true that the gift of Christ to 
the world was the Spirit of Holiness. We rightly 
conceive of this spirit as a self-conscious force. But 
we wrongly think of it when we imagine it to have 
begun its work in the world at the point in time at 
which the Incarnation occurred. It is introduced in 
the Holy Scriptures, as the primal, eldest energy 
which moved upon Chaos, and evoked order* Jesus' 
work was to uncover a spiritual energy which had 
always been at work, and which had never been 
altogether without witnesses. The mark of divinity 
in Him is that He recognized the essential divinity in 
the world where He was, and put Himself at once 
into communication with it. He expected the world 
to grow better. He believed that its elemental 
forces, though sore let and hindered, worked steadily 
in the interest of God and not of Satan. The survival 
of a pagan dualism, which early found a lodgement 
within the Christian Church, has obscured this truth, 
made it seem strange, and in some curious way, 
" unsound ; " but one who reads the Gospels for him- 
self, and puts aside all traditional notions about 
"original sin," "total depravity," and such figments 
of the schools, will see how entirely Jesus believes in, 
and hoped for, the world and the race with which He 
identified Himself. 



154 SONS OF GOD. 

The facts clearly show that His conception of the 
situation was the true one. Turn to what aspect of 
human life you will, and you see that our text is 
history as well as fancy. Watch the slow but steady 
humanizing of savage man ; the progressive gentling 
of manners within the periods of history ; the steady 
decadence of the horrors and the perpetuity of war ; 
the growth in political purity and social conditions ; 
the more and more complete administration of equity 
between man and man ; the elevation into dignity and 
reverence of woman and the womanly qualities ; the 
steady growth of the Church ; its gradual disentangle- 
ment from the ideas of law and force ; the ameliora- 
tion of the condition of children, and the poor, and 
sick, and helpless ; the steady clarification of moral 
judgment, — look steadily, I say, at all these things, 
which are real facts, and you will become more im- 
pressed with the thought that the universe is ad- 
justed in the interest of righteousness. Mr. Matthew 
Arnold accounts for it all by the existence of "A 
stream of tendency, — a Power, not ourselves — which 
makes for righteousness." There is no need to quarrel 
with his phrases. They are striking, and up to their 
measure, true. But St. John's phrase is better: 
" The earth helped the woman " ! 

The truth is one which, when it is realized, must 
profoundly affect one's whole thought about life, and 
especially about religion. Every one knows that 
motion is finally "in the line of least resistance." If 
the environment amid which the soul dwells, as well 
as the qualities of the soul itself, are such as make it 



THE EARTH HELPED THE WOMAN. 155 

move more easily toward wrong than toward right, 
then toward wrong it w^ill go. And it will be hard to 
persuade it that it is blameworthy for moving so. It 
follows its nature, as all things do. It brings forth 
fruit after its kind. Can men expect to gather grapes 
of thorns, or figs of thistles ? But if this be true, it 
sets one to re-examine more carefully what is the in- 
trinsic nature of this plant man-soul. Is it a vine or 
a bramble, a thistle or a fig-tree ? Is the soil from 
which it springs a hateful compound of bitumen and 
poison, or is it the kindly earth full of heavenly 
juices ? 

It is true that the Saints, both those whose record 
is in Scripture, and those now living, often cry out 
under stress of evil, that the world and the flesh are 
leagued with the devil to bring them to death. 
Through the smoke of their battle the heavens loom 
lurid, and the earth gives a diabolic sound. Their 
natures are torn asunder, and they find the move- 
ments of the members shaping itself into a fixed 
law opposed to the law of the mind. But this is 
always a temporary, passing despondency, a discolor- 
ing of the real vision. It is always followed swiftly 
by a hopeful mind, in which the earth and all that 
dwell therein are seen to be the Lord's and not the 
devil's. The sober judgment of humanity is, that 
the world is so constituted that right triumphs and 
wrong is beaten down. The theme of poetry, fiction, 
and the drama is the way in which circumstances 
conspire to bring to naught the evil-doer. Who 
would read a story in which the hero comes to grief 



156 SONS OF GOD. 

and the villain succeeds ? Who would go twice to 
see a play in which the heroine is cast out ashamed, 
and the betrayer brought to honor? The novelist 
and the playwright but personify the deep instinct 
which possesses all unsophisticated minds that the 
universe is conducted in the interest of goodness. 

Nothing could be worse than that devilish notion 
which masquerades under the mask of godly fear, 
that organized righteousness, as it is represented by 
the Church of Christ, is fighting against odds. She 
fights with certainty, because it is with ever spring- 
ing hopefulness. What man or woman is there who 
has " come out on the Lord's side," who has not been 
distressed and disheartened by the thought that they 
were turning away from the real, stable, solid, win- 
ning things, to weak, sentimental, powerless, losing 
things ? There is much in ordinary religious modes 
of speaking and thinking which paralyzes all enthu- 
siasm. 

But, after all, that portion of the earth which 
most concerns me is that piece of cunningly com- 
pounded clay in which I dwell. Suppose I take a 
lamp in my hand, and set about to explore the re- 
cesses of my own nature. Do its natural avenues 
lead toward light, or toward darkness ? It is hardly 
needful to even formally disavow the hateful figment 
of " total depravity." We, at least, have not been 
reared under that blighting shadow. But in this 
mixture of good and bad, of God and brute, which I 
am, which is natural and which is unnatural ? Which 
holds the rightful title to the possession of myself ? 



THE EARTH HELPED THE WOMAN. 157 

Jesus' opinion is not hard to find, although often so 
strangely missed. " Except ye be born again," He 
says. Be born again. But what does birth do? 
Does it change the embryo of a jackal into a lamb, of 
a tiger into a kid, of a demon into a god ? No : it 
changes the environment of an already living crea- 
tion, but does not change its kind. It remains God's 
offspring after the new birth, as it always had been. 
In His other great parable of moral restoration, he says 
that " when the young man came to himself " he turned 
toward his Father's house. When he came to him- 
self, himself from which he had been estranged. 
The great apostle says that " the spirit of God works 
with our spirits." Works with them, not against. 
The bent of humanity is toward God. 

But let us take account of all the facts. A spring 
which has been too long overloaded and pressed 
down comes to lose its "life." Christianity lays 
awful emphasis upon this fact. It fairly faces the 
possibility of a human soul losing its native divine 
quality. There is a sin unto death. There is a kind 
of being of whom it were better that he had never 
been born. The moral forces of the universe may 
be violated, and may bring disaster even as those of 
the physical world. But the question before us is, 
What are those forces, and in which direction do they 
operate? We believe that in God's world of men 
and things, it is the law of moral gravitation that 
things fall upward when unhindered. The earth 
helps the woman. 

I would be sorry to have you think that all this is 



158 SONS OF GOD. 

from mere interest in speculation, or from any love of 
paradox. I believe that the principle I have tried to 
set out is not only profoundly true, but of the suprem- 
est practical importance. Surely the belief that he is 
working with, and not against, the order of things, 
will make one more hopeful in the struggle for inner 
righteousness. It will set him free from that antece- 
dent despair which enfeebles the will, and paralyzes 
the moral energies. He who struggles with evil 
within or without will pick up heart of hope when 
he sees that the elemental forces of life are on the 
side which he has deliberately espoused. 

Beside that, it brings purpose and meaning into 
the seeming confusion of the things which we see. 
A world thought of as intrinsically hateful will be 
filled with a babble of discords, wrangling, jangling, 
raucous voices. But when one comes, slowly, but at 
last, to perceive that it is in very deed God's world, 
he will hear in its multitudinous voices the harmony 
of the sons of God shouting for joy. 



XIII. 

THE SPIRIT WHICH WAS IN CHRIST. 



XIII. 

THE SPIEIT WHICH WAS IN CHRIST. 

$fnl. HE. 4, 5. 

" ILooft not eberg man on fjts obm tfjinp, but eberg man also on 
tlje tfjings of otfjers. ILet tftis mtntJ be in gou, fofttrij bias also in 
Cfjrist 3zmx." 

" As I walked by myself I talked to myself, 
And thus myself did say to me, 
Look to thyself, and take care of thyself 
For nobody cares for thee." 

This old rhyme is the concentration of human 
"wisdom." Christianity pronounces it to be both 
sin and folly. The Epistle for the Sunday before 
Easter exhorts to an exactly opposite line of con- 
duct. It urges that this other method of living be 
deliberately chosen, not capriciously, or for a moment, 
but that it be adopted as the habitual manner of 
living. It does not hesitate to assert that exaltation 
comes that way, — by the way of renunciation. It 
points to a supreme instance. It says that Christ 
did so, and achieved the supreme place in the 
universe thereby. He put aside all thought of His 
own rights, the right of equality with God, which 
includes all else, and abased Himself for His 
brethren, with the result that every other name in 
the universe pales before the lustre of His. It urges 

161 



162 SONS OF GOD. 

men to adopt the same method of living, and 
promises a similar outcome of it. 

But the Gospel for the same Sunday proceeds to 
show what was, in His case, the immediate con- 
sequence of the renunciation which He made. It 
was crucifixion. 

Was ever any more Quixotic project entertained 
by sane men than that of which the Christian 
preacher is the professional advocate? It proposes 
to persuade men to renounce that manner of life 
which the experience of the ages and seemingly 
the necessities of existence pronounce to be the 
only safe, only possible one, and of deliberate choice 
adopt another, which is unnatural, fantastic, and 
which, upon the Gospel's own showing, brought 
Him who introduced it to irremediable grief. Is it 
any wonder that the doctrine of the cross seemed to 
the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks fool- 
ishness ? But the strange thing is that multitudes 
since St. Paul have found it to be divine wisdom 
and divine power. Let us see, if possible, how 
these things can be. First of all, I want to correct 
what I think is a wide-spread pious error in this 
relation, that is, that there is any good in pain. 
There is none. The lesson of the cross is not that 
there is any excellent quality in suffering. Ad- 
versity — like the foul toad which hath yet a precious 
jewel in his head — hath its uses, but a foul toad it 
is all the same. There is nothing in the life of 
Christ to intimate that there is any virtue in being 
hurt. I know that it has been read so very often. 



THE SPIRIT WHICH WAS IN CHRIST. 163 

But the reading is wrong. It is very easy to pick 
up any one of the crosses which lie all about, while 
it is so difficult to possess the same mind which was 
also in Christ, that thousands have done this easier 
thing, and fancied they were " imitating Christ." 
The widely celebrated book of a Kempis is disfigured 
by this very mistake. " It is vastly easy," says a 
great preacher, " to be a John Baptist so far as the 
locusts and wild honey go." The exaltation which 
the Epistle asserts has not its spring in pain, but in 
the spirit of which it speaks. Jesus went not a 
single step out of His way to find a pang of body or 
soul. Such hurts as might be avoided without 
missing His purpose were avoided. He had no ex- 
perience of far the larger part of those ills that flesh 
is heir to. They did not come in His way. No pang 
of parturition, or paternal solicitude, or laborer's 
fatigue, or lassitude of sickness, or racking of phys- 
ical deformity, or pang of hunger, or spasm of physical 
terror, did He ever feel. There was no reason why 
He should. Pain is not good, but evil. Nor does the 
cross either glorify it, or open up its meaning. It is 
to be avoided where it may be. But it is as unhesi- 
tatingly to be taken up when the spirit which we 
are examining finds it in its way. It is to be taken 
up, not because it is good, but because there is no 
other way to the point we would reach. But is it 
possible to induce men practically to adopt the spirit 
of Christ, that is the controlling principle of His life, 
when they know perfectly well that to do so will 
make unavoidable many evils which could otherwise 
be escaped ? 



164 SONS OF GOD. 

What, then, was the spirit which dominated Jesus 
Christ? St. Paul does not call it by name, — and 
indeed, none of the names by which it has been 
called are quite satisfactory, — but he sees it at its 
highest in the Great Renunciation. The Hindoo 
prince, whom half the world reveres, sat under the 
bo-tree and resolved upon his great renunciation. 
Mr. Arnold has pictured it with dramatic fitness. 
He forsook his princely pleasures, and his sweet 
wife Maya, because all these were incompatible with 
his self-development. He struck, indeed, a high 
note, and myriads have listened entranced to his 
music. But the apostle's theme surpasses it as 
does the music of the spheres the harmonies of an 
orchestra. 

" He who was in the form of God, and thought it 
not robbery to be equal with God, emptied himself 
that he might become a man ! " He yearned for 
men, and renounced the glory which He had with 
God before the world was, in order that He might 
win them. This is the spirit which His Gospel 
inspires, a love for men which will not allow itself 
to be beaten down by any evil which may befall, not 
even though the blow come from the hand of the 
very one whom love seeks ! This spirit in Christ 
accounts for the cross which He came to bear ; the 
cross does not account for the spirit. Having become 
a man, the rest was unavoidable. It is here that the 
whole ascetic principle misses the truth. The whole 
company of monks, and cloistered nuns, of stylites, 
flagellants, anchorites, and Christian fakirs, have 



THE SPIRIT WHICH WAS IN CHRIST. 165 

missed of the spirit of Christ. They have looked, 
every man, upon his own things, and not upon the 
things of another ! Each has set before himself the 
task to rescue his own soul at any cost. Most have 
vainly fancied that by bearing self-inflicted pain 
they were paying a price. St. Anthony flies to the 
desert to escape from himself, and finds to his horror 
that himself had gone before him. The Florentine 
ladies flung their jewels into a heap in the plaza, 
because they fancied beauty to be a sin, and their 
mistake overtook them before the month had gone 
by. The "spirit of Christ" thinks not of itself at 
all, either well or ill. It finds its exaltation in seek- 
ing for another. For the joy that is set before it, it 
despises the cross, neither seeking nor shunning it. 

I have alluded to the belief that fidelity to the 
spirit of Christ will bring its possessor into pain. 
That is true, it will. To " become a Christian " will 
of necessity throw one out of harmony with at least 
a part of his environment. It will change friends 
into enemies, both within and without. It is true 
that it will do so to a less degree now than it would 
have done a century ago, — to an unspeakably less 
degree than it would eighteen hundred years ago. 
Life has been Christianized to an extent which few 
realize, and in ways in which I will try after a little 
to point out; but there still remains enough of it 
hostile to make it certain that whoever bears Christ's 
spirit must also share his cross. Whenever the same 
spirit which was also in Christ becomes roused to 
self-consciousness in a man it comes into distress. 



166 SONS OF GOD. 

It discovers that the environment in which it had 
always lived, and in which it had felt at home, is not 
the congenial place it had supposed. Movements of 
the flesh which the man had always taken for 
granted to be normal and natural, he finds to be 
unnatural and monstrous. To bring them into sub- 
jection to the spirit, he discovers, to his horror, will 
involve pain as sharp as that of cutting off a hand 
or plucking out an eye. It produces disturbance 
where previously there had been contentment. The 
possessor of the newly-awakened spirit becomes 
aware that his foes are of his most intimate house- 
hold, even his own thoughts and habits. Then 
the conventionalities of life are not adjusted to this 
spirit. They have been partially subjugated, as I 
said before, so that society is to a degree under the 
control of " Christian Customs," but there still sur- 
vives a large body which is distinctly antagonistic to 
the spirit of Christ. These are confronted in every 
sphere, in society, in trade and business, in politics 
snd science, in every place toward which the Chris- 
tian turns. The cost of being a single-minded fol- 
lower of Christ is enormous. It costs in self-restraint, 
in labor, in money, in repression of tastes, by cutting 
off whole fields of pleasure, not because they are 
intrinsically wrong, but because the Christian has no 
time to work them. It brings one into very painful 
relations to his fellow-men. It sternly bids him at 
the very outset to stop choosing his companions, 
as he has been doing, with a view to his own delecta- 
tion, but with a view to their advantage. That at 



THE SPIRIT WHICH WAS IN CHRIST. 167 

once compels one to turn to "the poor." But the 
poor, by the necessity of the case, are the most un- 
pleasing of companions. They take everything and 
give nothing. The spirit of Christ, whenever it is 
awakened in any one, compels him to readjust him- 
self to his fellow-men, to art, and amusement, and 
business, and manner of life. This is a cross. It 
rise up before one whenever he resolves to " deny 
himself." If he is affrighted, and turns back into 
himself, the cross immediately sinks out of sight. 
But such a one is thereafter shut up within himself. 
Whatever he can find there he may have, but nothing 
beyond. 

Now, what motive will induce a man to put him- 
self under so exacting a master as the spirit of 
Christ? The Christian motives are potent beyond 
all description. It would go without saying, that 
they must be, in order to move so many and so pro- 
foundly as they have. They are two. They are not 
to be sought in any new fact which Jesus has created, 
but in eternal necessities which Jesus has uncov- 
ered. The first mentioned is self-interest. " He 
that saveth his life shall lose it, but he that loseth 
his life, for my sake, shall find it." Everybody 
knows now that this is so. The glutton at the feast 
of life who reaches out on both sides, and gathers all 
to himself, is inevitably punished by loss of appetite, 
and the capacity to enjoy. Who ever thinks of a 
miser as being happy ? The word itself is the noun 
whose adjective is miserable. But why is the suc- 
cessful avaricious man miserable ? He has secured 



168 SONS OF GOD. 

what he started for. He set before himself the 
safety, adornment, and satisfaction of his life, and he 
achieved it. What then? Existence itself rounds 
on him. He saved his life, — and lost it. 

But St. Paul avers that honor and exaltation lie 
along the path which Jesus walked. Is this not 
true? Has Jesus not achieved "a name which is 
above every name"? Whose is above it? The 
plebiscite of the race has already been taken, and is 
for Him. It has set Him in a category by himself, 
not only as divine, but as human. Two men have in 
late time called the roll of the world's heroes. But 
both Carlyle and Emerson hesitate to classify Him. 
The gods have all fled before Him. If one of His 
disciples could have seen that in a few centuries it 
would have come about that the only choice possible 
for men would be Christ or atheism, — that every 
other god had left the field, — would he not have 
been ready to chant his nunc dimittis f 

Remember Heine's vision. At the gorgeous ban- 
quet on Olympus, where all the gods and goddesses 
sat about the table, a wan, bleeding figure enters, 
bearing a cross, which he lays down among the 
flowers, while one by one the guests slink out into 
the night, and have never been heard of since. It 
has come about that every knee in heaven and 
earth, which is capable of genuflection at all, bows 
before Him. 

Nor is it only a remote and barren admiration for 
a majestic but impossible character. His spirit is 
slowly but steadily dominating human society. In 



THE SPIRIT WHICH WAS IN CHRIST. 169 

one form or other it is inspiring the most notice- 
able movements of modern life. What does all the 
social and political unrest of our time signify ? Why 
has slavery gone? Why are men, and women too, 
so deeply concerned about the condition of the poor ? 
What has caused the swiftly increasing contempt and 
indignation at the selfish and indifferent among the 
rich ? Naught else but the spirit of Christ moving 
among men. All these phenomena are to be found 
only within Christendom, or in heathendom at those 
places where Christianity has touched it. The mul- 
tiplication of charities, the decadence of privilege, 
the extension of suffrage, all these are but the slow 
dawning in the consciousness of humanity that every 
man is of such value that every other man finds his 
highest good in seeking him. Nothing could be 
more idle, because nothing more contrary to the 
facts, than to refer all this to " the law of progress." 
Where is there any such " law " ? Where has it ope- 
rated in the past, and where can it be seen at work 
now producing any such result, save among those peo- 
ples who have also voted the place of highest exalta- 
tion to Jesus Christ? Every high ideal has been 
brought in, and gained a place for itself at the cost of 
the blood of a Christian martyr. The first generation 
set the Son of man above the son of Caesar, perished 
therefor, and the world adopted their view. The 
poor monk Telemachus leaped into the arena, and 
sternly bade the gladiators cease from throttling one 
another. The angry crowd poured down from the 
benches and tore him to pieces, — but there were no 



170 SONS OF GOD. 

more such spectacles. Howard was the laughing- 
stock of Europe for his crazy attempt to have con- 
victs treated as men and not like brutes. But 
before the world had done laughing the reform had 
come. From the men and women who in their day- 
were derided, mocked, accounted fools, stoned, jeered 
at, crucified, who despised the cross, thinking only of 
the glory set before them, from these the world has 
had its heart-hunger fed. None of them have ever 
intimated that pain was good. But they have sought 
the fulness of life. They have had faith to follow 
the spirit within them which they recognized to be 
divine, in the fixed belief that they would not be put 
to intellectual confusion or to ultimate loss by so 
doing. Many of them have apparently passed out of 
sight without anything to vindicate their obstinate 
faith. Many have looked along the via crueis, and 
have feared to venture to its end. But many have 
found even now that that way life lies. God is love ; 
therefore, to be like Him involves cost. But God is 
strong ; therefore, to be like Him is to be on the side 
which must finally win. 



XIV. 
THE LAW OF PROGRESS IN RELIGION. 



XIV. 

THE LAW OF PEOGEESS IN EELIGION. 

Sofjn im. 12, 13. 

"E fjabe mattg tijings to sag unto gott, but ge cannot bear tfjem 
nofo. ?§ofobeit fofjen fje, tfje spirit of trutij, is come, Jjc bill gut&e 
20u into ail trutfj." 

It is somewhat startling to observe the attitude of 
Jesus toward the current religion of his time. We 
are apt to forget that there was a Church then, and 
that He was a member of it. Whatever obligations 
in the way of belief and conduct such membership 
carried with it for anybody, it carried for Him. 
There was in the Church in His time, as there is 
now, a set of doctrines, a code of rules, a system of 
ordinances, a ministry, a code for conduct, a machin- 
ery of religion. Theological controversies and eccle- 
ciastical were just as common as now. There were 
"schools of thought" in the Church then as now. 
What attitude did He take toward it all? This 
question is not asked from curiosity, but for a 
practical reason. Bearing in mind that He claimed 
no exemption on account of His divinity from the 
ordinary duties and perplexities which attend upon 
the life of a man, He is just as valuable to us for 
" an ensample of godly life " in things pertaining to 
religion as in things belonging to morals. And 

173 



174 SONS OF GOD. 

surely here, if anywhere, earnest-minded men need 
and would welcome light. They belong by birth and 
inheritance to a religious society ; in many cases they 
have publicly professed their allegiance to it ; how 
far thereafter are they left at liberty to dissent from 
the doctrine or discipline of that society, and still 
retain their membership in it ? The conduct of Jesus 
illuminates this question. He was a member by birth 
and inheritance of a Church whose divine establish- 
ment and authority He never once calls in question. 
He permitted Himself to " fulfil all righteousness " by 
complying with all its outward requirements. He 
was circumcised, presented in the Temple, made free 
of the corporation. How did He thereafter bear Him- 
himself toward the doctrine and discipline of His 
Church? 

It seems clear that, in general, He went with it in 
its mode of belief and practice. On one occasion, at 
least, He invoked the aid of His divine power to 
enable Himself and His friends to discharge their 
ecclesiastical obligations, when He wrought a miracle 
to find the wherewithal to pay the Temple tax. But 
while He discharged His outward debt to it, He did not 
hesitate to dissent openly, and as a public Teacher, 
from many of its accepted beliefs. 

For example, with regard to the nature and 
obligation of the Sabbath Day. Here He disagreed 
entirely with the orthodox view. This was a subject 
upon which His Church's opinion was well settled, 
and had been for a long time. His words and actions 
were thought by the religious world of His time and 



THE LAW OF PROGRESS IN RELIGION. 175 

place to be loose, dangerous, demoralizing, contrary 
to the Word of God and to the law of the Church. 
Nevertheless, He held, taught, and practised them. 
It is often assumed that He simply used His superior 
authority to abrogate and set aside the Law of Moses, 
as He had a right to do. But did He have the right 
to do so, under the limitations which He had set for 
himself ? And did He do so, in point of fact ? The 
facts are the other way. He had not then abrogated 
them. He only declared His individual dissent from 
them, and His emphatic rejecting of the accepted 
interpretation of them. 

In the matter of marriage and divorce, which was 
then a cause ecclesiastic, His position comes out still 
more clearly. Here He dissented, not only from the 
usual practice of His Church, but from the Law of 
Moses itself. He declares that in the nature of 
things that Law was temporary and transient, and 
had been already outgrown. The moral condition of 
the people to whom the Law had been given had 
been long ago outgrown and left behind. He does 
not say that a new and more strenuous law was 
about to be put in place of it ; but that such a higher 
obligation always had been in existence, and that 
its obligation became immediate at the moment 
whenever the moral perception of a people was 
clear enough to see it. 

The Ritual Law of His Church, He seems to have 
disregarded almost entirely. He " went up to Jerusa- 
lem " with His disciples ; but certainly He could not 
observed very punctiliously all those complex details 



176 SONS OF GOD. 

which an orthodox Jew would have thought bounden, 
or the record thereof would have been given some 
space in the minute daily record contained in the 
Gospels. He observed, at least, one Passover ; but 
He used that to change both its significance and the 
manner of its observance. There is nothing in His 
life like that curious carefulness of the dying Soc- 
rates to provide that the regulation cock should be 
offered to iEsculapius. In speaking to His disciples 
His phrase is, " Moses said unto you ; — but I say 
unto you." 

But all the while He retained His membership in 
the Church of Moses, and recognized the Law of Moses 
to be in general operation. In those cases where the 
accepted views were inadequate or faulty He set them 
aside, and appealed to a higher and more universal 
truth. This He continued to do just so fast as His dis- 
ciples were able to comprehend Him. When He came 
to a certain point with them, He tells them that He 
has yet many things to say to them, but they are not 
yet able to receive them. He says that His people 
will be able to do so in the future, under the guid- 
ance of the Spirit which He introduces. It is clear 
that He thought of that spiritual illumination as 
to be slow, gradual, progressive, continuous. This 
promise of progress in spiritual discernment could 
not have been meant, in the nature of the case, to 
apply to the particular individuals to whom it was 
addressed. Some of them "went backward, and 
walked no more with Him." Some passed away 
while still very backward. One, at least, turned 



THE LAW OF PROGRESS IN RELIGION. 177 

upon Him, and betrayed Him to the conventional 
ecclesiastical world whom He had offended. Like 
the other promises and commands given to His then 
followers, it was meant to be of continuous operation 
through all time, so long as His Church should 
endure. This is, indeed, the quality in which His 
Church is distinguished from that one which it su- 
perseded. That was organized around the idea of 
fixity, while His contained at its very centre the 
principles of progress. 

Christianity, then, is meant to be progressive in 
every part of its structure, — in Doctrine, Organiza- 
tion, and manner of life. I do not mean only that 
it must always move forward in the way of gaining 
in bulk, in subduing to itself constantly increasing 
areas of the world; but that it must also undergo 
those inward and structural changes which are the 
condition and accompaniment of growth. A large 
portion of the Church has always been, and is, slow 
to believe this. It is distrustful of present inspira- 
tion. It looks to some period in the past, at which 
religious truth became complete, and stated finally. 
It does not easily associate the idea of progress with 
that of religion; for progress implies change, and 
religion has to do with things which are abiding. It 
is a very common way of thinking, that the phrase, 
" The Faith once delivered to the saints," means the 
body of truth given by Jesus to His disciples. The 
fact is, as can be seen by any one who will turn to 
the passage, that it refers to the truth about God 
which had come slowly to be known through many 



178 SONS OF GOD. 

centuries in Old Testament times. The emphasis 
ought to be laid, not upon " once," but upon " saints." 
Faith always has been, and always must be, associ- 
ated with sanctity. But it cannot be the peculiar 
possession of any particular epoch. But it is far 
easier to think of religious Doctrine as consisting in 
a set of definite propositions, strikingly displayed to 
a certain set of persons at a definite time, and by 
them passed on intact, than it is to think of it as a 
living body of truth which changes its form of ex- 
pression from age to age, so as to adapt itself to the 
various generations and peoples who receive it. It 
is easier also to think it rounded and complete, as 
it is ideally, than to think of it as coming slowly and 
increasingly, as it does, into the apprehension of the 
Church. 

The same thing is true about the Bible. The pop- 
ular mind always chooses the easier of two forms of 
thought. It thinks of the Bible as a book. It thinks 
of God as having sat down deliberately to reveal 
something to man, and of His having caused that 
revelation to be written in a book for its preservation. 
One has only to bring the idea out into a clear state- 
ment to see how inadequate, how childish, it is. But 
then it is easy to think thus. On the other hand, 
the real truth of the matter requires serious effort to 
get it before one's apprehension. The Bible is not a 
book at all. It is rather a library of many volumes, 
written by all sorts of men, and at various times and 
places, during a period of more than a thousand 
years. It is the story of the way in which men 



THE LAW OF PROGRESS IN RELIGION. 179 

received a revelation of truth which God opened up 
to them slowly, painfully, little by little, as the 
world grew older and wiser, and more and more able 
to apprehend it. Beginning with the simplest moral 
proposition, the knowledge of good and evil, it goes 
on slowly to the manifestation of God in the person 
of His Son. But the Son expressly says, that although 
the revelation had been made, and stood thereafter 
staring men in the face, they would only be able, 
little by little, to take it in. He declared that the 
Spirit of truth which He revealed would constantly 
lead the successive generations of disciples into a 
better and truer apprehension of it. Sydney Smith 
was right when he said, " We are the Fathers." No 
generation of Christians, before the consummation 
of all things, may, without arrogance, affirm that it 
holds the whole, or even the best, truth of Jesus. If 
it really possesses the Spirit of Christ, it must rever- 
ently expect that Spirit to do His proper work, that 
is, to lead them into truth ; but not in such wise that 
the next generation must receive the truth from it 
solely as an inheritance and without the power to 
receive immediate illumination. This is one of the 
hardest things for the Church to learn, — to believe 
in its own inspiration. It glorifies a past time which, 
for those who were then in it, must have seemed as 
gray and work-a-day as does our own time. We 
transform it in imagination. When we would express 
our belief, we tremble to pass outside the Creeds 
which it formulated. When we would frame a 
Liturgy, we seem to be smitten with a present 



180 SONS OF GOD. 

dumbness, and can find fit words for our devotion 
only in the prayers of a dead and gone generation. 
Do not misunderstand me ; no one could feel more 
profoundly how fatal a thing it is to break with the 
past in religion, to interrupt at any point the current 
of Divine life. But I insist that even " they without 
us cannot be perfected." The things of God, in 
order to produce the sense of reality, must be ours, 
not only by inheritance, but also by discovery. I 
think that what we of this generation need, above all 
else, is to believe that God has a blessing for us also. 

That each stage of development in the kingdom 
should show its own peculiar form or type of life, 
ought to be evident for various reasons. 

In the first place, because movement is the law of 
Life. Only lifeless things remain unchanged. The 
instant one ceases to think of the Church as an 
"Institution" or an "Organization," and comes to 
realize that it is a living organism, he sees that this 
must be so. There is a profound truth in the phrase, 
" The Church, the Lord's Body." His body, not His 
monument, or His record, or His house, but His living 
members. Being so, it must show the same phenom- 
ena that all living things do. It must integrate and 
disintegrate. Dead and worn-out matter must drop 
away from it (for the most part insensibly, as from a 
living body), and be replaced by new and fit material. 
But being plastic with life, it ought to be expected 
that it will, while maintaining its unbroken life, 
become modified in time and place to fit its con- 
stantly changing environment. This was clearly 



THE LAW OF PROGRESS IN RELIGION. 181 

our Lord's thought. What does He mean by His 
parables of yeast and grain and vine? The leaven, 
to fill the figure, must grow. But growth means 
persistence of identity, together with change of 
appearance. The little lump of dry cells which 
begins the ferment, is hardly recognizable in the 
moist, expanded lump of leavened meal. The same 
yeast shows quite different appearances in barley- 
meal and in flour of wheat. How unlike in their 
several aspects to sight and sense are the fibrous 
roots, the lusty stem, and the clustered grapes of the 
same vine. Yet all see that they are the same plant. 
Who will say that because the Church in America 
in the nineteenth century is unlike in appearance to 
the Church in Asia Minor in the second century, it is 
any the less really or less completely the Church of 
God? 

Beside this, the palpable fact is, that Christianity 
has been profoundly modified in passing through the 
centuries, without losing or even imperilling its 
identity. Suppose an observer able to calmly observe 
it in actual life at Antioch in the first century, and 
again at Constantinople in the fifth, again at Rome in 
the fifteenth, and at London or New York to-day. 
He could not mistake but that it was the same body, 
animated by the same spirit, in every stage ; but the 
bodily features would be as diverse as are those of 
the diverse races among whom it has lived, or as is 
that of the child from the youth or the man. He 
would see it at one stage with but a fragment of a 
New Testament and only the rudiments of a creed. 



182 SONS OF GOD. 

He would see it again with the canon of its Scriptures 
closed, its creeds drawn out in detail and settled by 
formal council ; and again with an elaborate Ritual 
and Canon Law added; and again, maybe, with 
much of these dropped away. But at what point 
could he say, Here it began, or here it ceased, the 
living Body moved by the living Spirit of Christ ? 

That there is a possible peril in this way of con- 
ceiving of the Church cannot be denied. It is the 
peril which attends upon living. If only it were 
possible to have the whole subject matter of religion 
settled, fixed, put in final shape once and for all 
times and all men ! Ay ; if it were possible. If we 
could only be assured that the last word of Biblical 
interpretation had been said ; that the last clause had 
been added to a Body of Divinity, no part of which 
should ever again be in danger of decay; that the 
Church's Order and Discipline were settled and 
working with the precision of a machine ; that our 
sole responsibility was only to preserve it all un- 
touched, and pass it over to our successors ! Then 
there would have been at least one generation of 
disciples to whom the Master would have had no 
need to say, " I have many things yet to say to you, 
but ye cannot bear them now." 

But no: religious truth neither comes, nor oper- 
ates, nor abides, nor is transmitted after that simple 
fashion. Religion is a vital process. The Church is 
a living thing. As the nature of love can only be 
known by loving, or the quality of life by living, so 
the truth of God as He is made manifest in His 



THE LAW OF PROGRESS IN RELIGION. 183 

only Son Jesus Christ, is only reached by His Church, 
or by any individual soul, as the Spirit thereof takes 
of it and mingles it with the currents of the soul's 
or the Church's life. This can only be as each life 
is able to bear it. 



XV. 
RELIGION AND KNOWLEDGE. 



XV. 

KELIGION AND KNOWLEDGE. 

©an. IIL 4. 
" Mtn sfjall run to anti fro, anU fmofolefcge sljall be increased" 

ilufce IBTHBE. 8. 
" OTJjen fje rometfj, fotil Fje fin* faitfj on tfje eartfj T" 

There is a very strange connection between these 
two passages of Scripture, spoken half a thousand 
years apart from one another. When the prophet saw 
the vision of the last days, the thing which made its 
impression upon his imagination was the wonderful 
quickening of intellectual activity. Men shall run 
to and fro, and there shall be a mighty increase in 
human knowledge. When the Saviour looked upon 
the same picture, it raised a question, apparently, in 
His mind, as to whether the Faith which He had come 
into the world to establish would be able to survive 
such increase of human knowledge. There is cer- 
tainly not only a relation between these two passages, 
but there is also a relation between the two things 
themselves, — between the increase of human knowl- 
edge and the persistence of the Christian faith. 

It has been thought sometimes that the one is in- 
compatible with the other. Or, at any rate, that the 
very worst possible condition for the subsistence of 

187 



188 SONS OF GOD. 

the Faith of Christ is, or would be, a time when 
human knowledge would be greatly multiplied, 
when men would run to and fro, characterized by 
that restlessness which always marks intellectual 
progress. 

Certainly it must be agreed upon, the thing which 
characterizes our century is its increase of knowl- 
edge. We are blinded to this very largely by our own 
familiarity with the fact ; but it is the simple truth, 
that the world has increased in knowledge more in 
the century in which we live than it had in the 
twenty-five centuries which preceded it. It sounds 
a startling thing, and yet it is simply true, thinking 
of human knowledge and human discovery as a path- 
way along which men walk, that they have travelled 
as far in the century in which we live as the race had 
travelled during the twenty-five hundred years pre- 
ceding it. The astonishing quickening of intellec- 
tual activity, the extent of the domain which has 
been conquered by man's knowledge, and brought 
within the range of his understanding within the last 
century or two, — indeed, within the last century — 
is simply marvellous. You can hardly count on the 
fingers of your two hands even the names of the sci- 
ences which have been discovered and developed 
within the memory of men yet living. Just think 
for a moment of a few of these as samples of the 
extraordinary extension of human knowledge which 
belongs almost to our own generation. Geology, for 
example, has a history of less than a hundred years. 
The very name is a new coinage ; and it is coined to 



RELIGION AND KNOWLEDGE. 189 

represent a new fact. It is only within the last cen- 
tury that science has at all begun to turn over the 
leaves of the rocky strata in which our earth is 
bound, and to read from them the records of creation. 
Anthropology has extended its researches into the 
remotest past. It has ransacked every cave in which 
men hid themselves, whether five thousand or five 
hundred thousand years ago. It has turned up the 
drift that lies upon the earth's surface, and has read 
off the record upon every tusk and arrowhead and 
fragment of ancient civilizations that lies hid away 
in every secret place upon the earth. Science has 
taken its microscope, and followed the mysteries of 
life away into their most secret recesses. Nothing 
has been found so small but that human knowledge 
can take it, and learn from it something which adds 
to the sum total of human knowledge. It has traced 
life away down to its very beginnings ; followed it 
through all its secret ramifications ; traced its rela- 
tions ; has followed it far more than from the cradle 
to the grave ; it has followed it from the very first 
step of half-living existence, through every step to 
the death and resurrection of the human body. 

New arts have been brought into use. All the 
marvellous triumphs which followed upon the discov- 
ery of steam and electricity, — and you may name 
such things by the dozen, — I only name these as 
samples. But I beg to press upon you this consider- 
ation, that all these things have been achieved 
within the century in which we live. 

Now, it would be idle to think that this extraor- 



190 SONS OF GOD. 

dinary amount of new discovery in the range of 
human knowledge would not react upon men's 
Religious faith. There is a connection, there always 
must be a connection, between what men know and 
what they believe. It is just as idle to imagine that 
discoveries in the arts and sciences will not react 
upon, and change, and in some sense permanently 
modify, our belief, as it is to think that civilization 
will not modify our ways of living, and therefore 
our social customs, and therefore our affections and 
habits of thinking. 

I beg you to think for a moment how closely all 
our habits of Christian believing are bound up with 
the things which we learn from physical science, 
which belong to the sum total of the world's 
knowledge, 

When Copernicus enunciated his theory of the 
solar system, he did very much more than write 
books on astronomy. He changed the Christian reli- 
gion as well. If you will think for a moment, you will 
see how. Suppose, as the world did suppose until a 
few centuries ago, that this earth was the very centre 
of all things, that the sun, an orbed blaze, was a yard 
across its face, moving around it from day to day, 
and the moon, another attendant around it, with the 
diameter of half a dozen inches ; that upon this 
earth, the one thing which stood pre-eminent for dig- 
nity and magnificence was man ; and then you can 
easily understand how men believed that they were 
in very close and immediate relationship with God. 
For what was there between them? There was 



RELIGION AND KNOWLEDGE. 191 

God, that sat there in the remote space. There were 
the angels, that had communication between God and 
man. And then men, who inhabited this earth, the 
most dignified, the greatest of all things, next to God 
Himself. 

But now comes a new science which says to the 
human race, You are mistaken about the position you 
hold in the universe. Instead of your having your 
habitation upon the central orb about which all the rest 
wheel, you are simply little specks walking upon an 
insignificant fragment, in one of the farthest off and 
most remote corners of space ; you must abdicate the 
honored position which you had in the universe. 
As the world, the material world, was belittled, the 
human race was belittled with it. And so it was 
a natural step, although maybe a long step, from 
that position which man claimed for himself, as 
being only little lower than the angels, to the new 
position which man claimed for himself as being 
little higher than the apes. The step is a long 
one, but it is by no means an unnatural one. It is 
the necessary consequence of the dethronement of 
our race from the place which it supposed itself to 
hold in the universe. 

The belief in miracles has been affected in a simi- 
lar way. Fancy reading the story of the miracle of 
Joshua to the Christian world of four hundred years 
ago. " The sun stood still over Gibeon, and the moon 
over the valley of Ajalon." There was nothing 
wonderful about that. Why should not the sun 
stand still ? It was made to go around the earth, to 



192 SONS OF GOD. 

serve as its satellite. There was nothing wonderful 
in the portent, nothing to stagger the imagination of 
the Christian faith. But wait until men go to and fro, 
and knowledge has increased. Then read the same 
story to the world of the nineteenth century, and they 
say, It is a mighty thing, this stopping of the sun over 
Gibeon. It involves a paralysis, or at least a -tempo- 
rary pause, of the whole solar system, of worlds beyond 
worlds, sweeping away to the borders of the universe. 

For this reason such a record as that contained in 
the holy Scripture lays more stress upon our faith 
than it did upon the faith of our forefathers. It does. 
The resurrection of the body, for example, was one 
thing before the laws of chemical metamorphosis 
were discovered, and is quite another thing now. 

It is idle to think that all these discoveries do not 
have their influence upon the Christian faith. They 
must do so. They have very seriously affected, not 
only the body of the faith, but the way in which 
Christian minds stand related toward the " Faith 
delivered to the saints." There are certain secondary 
doctrines, which at one time were held to be part and 
parcel of the fundamentals of the faith, which were 
once entangled with the Apostles' Creed, which now 
have become obsolete. When it was said that it 
might be that the world was not created in six 
natural days, there were thousands of devout Chris- 
tians who were terrified at an idea which struck, 
as they conceived, at the inspired record of crea- 
tion, an idea that would destroy the very possi- 
bility of believing anything. There was a time 



RELIGION AND KNOWLEDGE. 193 

when it was supposed that every word of the Scrip- 
tures of the Old and New Testament was absolutely 
and literally the transcript of the revelation of the 
Holy Ghost. Now both of these beliefs have been 
profoundly modified. They have been modified at 
the cost of casting many loose from the anchorage 
which held them within the faith. But, apparently, 
there has been no way of preventing it. When the 
doctrine of Copernicus was enunciated, it was laid 
under the ban of the Pope ; and there it lay, officially, 
until the first quarter of the eighteenth century was 
ended. And yet it steadily asserted for itself a 
place in the knowledge of men. So, whenever a fact 
has once found lodgement within the sum total of 
human knowledge, it must have its influence upon 
the Christian faith. We must adjust ourselves to it, 
for the reason that a fact is one of those immutable 
things which cannot be changed by any exercise of 
faith. 

Now, a very disastrous consequence of this has 
been, that there is at present an alienation of certain 
whole classes from the Christian religion. There are 
a considerable number of educated men who hold 
themselves aloof almost entirely from the gospel of 
Christ ; especially those whose education and train- 
ing have been in the physical sciences, along which 
the line of discovery has been the most rapid. And 
they have run to and fro so rapidly that they appear, 
at least temporarily, to have outrun the faith which 
belonged to their fathers. 

There has also come about within the circle of 



194 SONS OF GOD. 

those who hold to the Christian faith something of 
indifference, and very much of apprehension. It 
seems to them that when our Lord cast his eye over 
the years that were to come, and saw the end of all 
things, the apprehension in his mind was a well- 
grounded one as to whether or not the time might 
not come before the consummation of all things 
when, by the increase of knowledge, there should 
have come about an almost entire loss of faith. 

What shall we say to all this? Here stand 
the two terms of the problem. Knowledge has 
increased ; faith, in a certain aspect, has decreased. 
What lies in the future? Is knowledge going on 
increasing, and is faith going on decreasing? or is it 
possible that we have misread the signs of the 
present time? I answer unquestionably, that the 
faith of our Lord Jesus Christ is, by the very terms 
of its enunciation, bound to grow, and to grow con- 
tinuously. If it could be shown at any moment, 
that, taking the whole world together, the faith in 
our Lord Jesus Christ is steadily decreasing, it would 
justify very much more than apprehension for the 
future of the faith. It would argue something 
radically wrong with the faith itself. The Christian 
man dare not admit at any moment that the faith of 
his Lord Jesus Christ has ceased to move men's 
minds. It must continue to grow, or it must be 
seen to be stricken with the first symptoms of its 
inevitable death. 

Why is it, then, that we who are quite alive to the 
facts, and deeply sympathize with the spread of 



RELIGION AND KNOWLEDGE. 195 

human knowledge, have no apprehensions concerning 
the future triumph of religious faith? I will try to 
say why none of these thing move us. 

The first reason is this : Because Christianity does 
not appeal to common sense, but to common necessity. 
I beg you to ponder this. If Christianity made its 
last appeal to the universal consensus of the human 
understanding, there might come times in the world's 
history when people would refuse to listen to the 
voice of God. But it is not so. What we call 
" common sense " is simply the average wisdom of a 
generation. It is the knowledge that each individual 
has taken and poured into the common stock, redis- 
tributed as divided by the number of the persons 
who contributed it. Now, it may be possible, I fancy 
it is possible, for a whole generation, as it is for an 
individual, to go mad. But the salvation of the race 
cannot be contingent upon its always thinking rightly 
any more than that of an individual can. If Chris- 
tianity appealed to the understanding; if, in its last 
resort, it must give a logical reason for itself, — there 
would be a danger that times might come when hu- 
manity might move to moral disaster because of an 
intellectual fault. But you will notice this peculi- 
arity about the religion of our Lord Jesus Christ : 
it does not appeal to the understanding in the first 
instance, but to the common necessities of humanity. 
These necessities are abiding. For instance, there 
are some ineradicable instincts of the soul : one is the 
fear of death; another is the hope of immortality. 
Now, for the purposes of religion, it makes not the 



196 SONS OF GOD. 

smallest difference whether you and I have come lip 
by successive steps from the mollusks, or come down 
formed in the image and fashion of God. It makes 
not the smallest difference as to what our origin is, 
so long as we are here, endowed with certain ineradi- 
cable instincts. To these Christianity appeals. It is 
not because it is demonstrable in terms of the under- 
standing, but because it appeals to these instincts, 
which cannot be crushed out, nor forgotten, that it is 
so secure in the world. Remember, it is to the aver- 
age man that our Christianity appeals. And this, not 
by accident, but because there is a reason for it. 
" For you see your calling, brethren, how that not 
many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, 
not many noble, are called." "Have any of the 
rulers or of the Pharisees believed on him?" "I 
thank thee, O Father, that thou hast hid these things 
from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them 
unto babes : even so, Father ; for so it seemed good 
in thy sight." " Then said Jesus unto his disciples, 
verily, I say unto you, that a rich man shall hardly 
enter into the kingdom of heaven." 

I beg you to notice this, Christianity appeals to 
the " common people," that is, to average humanity. 
If for any reason a man is lifted up very far above 
the average, by abnormal wealth, by abnormal intel- 
lect, or anything that removes him very far above 
the average of his fellows ; or if anything drags him 
very far below that average, — Christianity cannot 
appeal to him. If it does, it does so " hardly," both 
to the " fool " and the " rich man." Why ? For the 



RELIGION AND KNOWLEDGE. 197 

reason that these are either above or below the com- 
mon humanity to which Christianity speaks. Now, 
then, the great mass of humanity can always be 
trusted ; it can always be depended upon to receive 
Christ, — always. Culture, pleasure, and luxury — I 
care little in what shape or form it comes — soon 
cease to move. For a little while a whole generation 
may be so intoxicated with intellectual advancement 
that it forgets God ; but the thought comes back 
again to the mass, and may always be depended upon 
to come back, for the reason that all these things are 
not sufficient to satisfy those imperious necessities to 
which Christ offers himself as an answer. 

Humanity does not remain long either in the lyceum 
or the dancing-hall. The tragedy of life may always 
be depended upon to bring them back again to that 
sober condition of mind into which the Christ can 
come. So long as the fact remains, that human life 
is ushered in with maternal pangs, that laughter 
ceases when discretion begins, that men die with 
groans, and that those who are bereaved sit beside 
their graves, and shed tears of bruised and broken 
affections, so long it will be that the tragedy of 
human life may be depended upon to bring the great 
mass of men back to the feet of Jesus Christ. And 
it is therefore that He has appealed, not to men in a 
mood of high exaltation, and not to men cast 
down in despair; but to the great mass of men, liv- 
ing, and loving, and hoping, and thinking, and suf- 
fering ; and never appeals for any great length of 
time in vain. 



198 SONS OF GOD. 

The story is told of that French philanthropist, 
Laravelere-Lepeux, that once he invented a new reli- 
gion. It was a sort of modified and improved Chris- 
tianity. He fitted for it a ritual and a series of 
doctrines which he embodied into a creed ; but, to his 
astonishment, his propaganda met with no success. 
Men listened to what he had to say, turned away 
and laughed, and went on with their frivolities. So 
he came one day to the ex-bishop Talleyrand, com- 
plaining that his new religion could get no hearing ; 
that men were so wedded to their old faiths, their 
old worship, that they would not listen. The keen 
old man sympathized with him, and said to him, " It 
is true ; it is very hard for a new religion to get a 
hearing. I am at a loss to advise you what to do." 
And then, seeming to bethink himself, he said, 
" There is one thing which you might try. I would 
suggest it to you. Get yourself crucified, and rise 
again the third day ! " 

It was a flash of light. Our Lord Jesus Christ 
has made His way into the very heart of the drama of 
human life, because He has got Himself crucified and 
risen again the third day ! He has gotten hold of the 
two most potent and imperious instincts of the human 
race, — the fear of death, and the hope of immortality. 
And because He has gained the attention of these two 
instincts He sitteth in the heavens and alloweth the 
heathen to rage, and the people to imagine a vain thing. 
Sooner or later, as individuals, they will be driven by 
their instincts back again to cling, in the shipwreck of 
all their hopes, to the foot of the cross of Jesus Christ. 



RELIGION AND KNOWLEDGE. 199 

Beside this, so far as one can see, faith is not de- 
clining. The century in which we live, the very- 
century which has seen all these wonderful strides of 
human discovery, is the first century in the history of 
the Christian faith in which the membership of the 
Christian Church has doubled itself. In 1810 there 
were, in the United States, one comitmnicant to 
every sixteen of the population. To-day there is 
one for every five. Over and above that, although 
conspicuous saintliness may be more rare now than 
in the days of the martyrs, yet I think it is simply 
true to say that the average holiness and righteous- 
ness of the world is higher and better and purer than 
ever it was before. So that we listen serenely to all 
the prophets of secularism. They may run to and 
fro as they please, and cry out in the streets that the 
end of our faith is come. We listen placidly to 
them, as we do to the confused and frightened voices 
of many friends of the faith. 

We turn our minds to the parable of Lessing. 
" Once upon a time a certain king of a great realm 
built himself a palace, the most gorgeous that ever 
had been planned, the wonder of the whole earth. 
A strife arose among certain connoisseurs as to some 
of the obscure ground plans upon which the palace 
was constructed. The conflict lasted through a great 
many years. While this conflict was going on, it 
happened upon a time, that a watchman one night 
cried out, ; Fire ! ' And the architects began running 
hither and thither, each with his plan, squabbling as 
to whether the fire had broken out in this place, 



200 SONS OF GOD. 

or whether it had broken out at that place, and as 
to what was the best spot to apply the engines. 
And its friends all took to wrangling. Alas, alas ! 
the beautiful palace will be burned. But it stood 
there ; and presently they discovered that it was not 
on fire at all. Behind it there was an extraordinary 
display of northern lights, which shone through it 
with such brilliancy that the palace itself seemed to 
be full of flame." 

So we say, Let knowledge increase, let it run to 
and fro, let it lighten up the world all it will, it will 
only illuminate, because it cannot destroy, the city 
of our God. 



XVI. 
BREAD OR GOD, 



XVI. 

BKEAD OR GOD. 

fHatt. Eff. 1-4- 

"&fjen foas 3esus let* up of tfje spirit into tfje bril&erness, to be 
tempted of tfje trtbtL attti fofjcn fje fjatf fastetr fortg trags anti fortg 
nights, fje iuas afterfoartts an fjungereft. ^IrttJ fofjen tfje tempter eame 
to fjttn, fje satti, If tfjou be tfje Son of (Sxotr, command tfjat tfjese 
stones be matie breati. But fje ansfoereti anU saitj, Et ts Written, 
Ifflau sfjall not libe bg breafc alone, but bg eberg foorto tfjat proceed 
etfj out of tfje moutfj of ©oto." 

First of all, I wish to call your attention to a 
word by which you may possibly be misled. " Then 
was Jesus led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to 
be tempted." Since our Bible was translated into 
English, the English word "to tempt" has very 
greatly changed its meaning. At that time it meant 
to test. It expressed such an action as when you 
take a cable and apply a weight to one end of it, the 
other being secured, to find out how much it will 
bear. Or as one takes a piece of ordnance and tests 
it with charge after charge of increasing weight of 
powder to see how much it will endure. Then was 
Jesus led up of the spirit into the wilderness to be 
tested. I beg you to bear this in mind, because the 
argument that I propose to lay before you will largely 
depend upon this distinction ; i.e., the fact that 

203 



204 SONS OF GOD. 

"temptation," wherever the word is used in Scrip- 
ture, means trial or testing, — as when one applies an 
acid to a coin to see whether it is good metal or 
base. 

Every year the Church sets apart forty days to be 
used in a particular way, and distinguished from the 
rest of the year. Many would give as a sufficient 
reason for doing this, that it is an ancient and pious 
custom. That the Church has always done this, per- 
haps may be a sufficient reason. I think it is usually 
well to assume that a thing which has been done 
over and over again by thoughtful and good people, 
must rest upon some sufficient reason. But I think 
that the time may be well expended, if we look a 
little farther than that, and try to ascertain if there 
is not some reason much more profound and farther- 
reaching than custom in regard to this matter ; for I 
think there is no custom of the Church as difficult 
to understand, and which is as generally, I may 
say as universally, misapprehended, as that of the 
observance of Lent, or rather the principle upon 
which the observance of Lent rests. If you will 
notice, every time when Ash-Wednesday comes and 
Lent begins, the newspapers begin to make merry 
over it. Sometimes they affect an air of profundity, 
and give a reason for it, but ordinarily the reason 
they give is the wrong one. They crack that joke 
upon the debutante now about to become the devotee. 
The fashionable man now retires from company and 
takes refuge in his club, and waits in a wandering, 
desolate frame of mind, until his forty days be over. 



BREAD OR GOD. 205 

The rest of the Christian world looks upon us Church 
people in our observance of Lent, our mortification 
of the flesh, and are not well able to make out what 
it all means. They see that good people do practise 
it, — people whose judgment is safe to follow in other 
directions, — but they do not always find these people 
able to give a clear reason for what they do. The 
philosopher has a reason. He says : It is simply a 
survival of an ancient custom. The time was when 
it showed itself in starvation, and scourging, and 
hair-cloth, and pease in one's shoes, and lacerations of 
the flesh, and pilgrimage, and standing upon pillars, 
and letting one's hair grow, and going hungry. All 
that has passed by, or at least the most of it has ; but 
there has come down to our age a certain survival of 
the ancient habit. To be sure, there remains but the 
shadow of a great name ; but there are always certain 
persons who have inherited some peculiar weaknesses, 
superstitions, or traditions, which have mostly passed 
out of the world, and which will also, sooner or later, 
pass out of the world too. And the philosopher adds, 
that, to his way of thinking, there is enough misery in 
the world anyhow ; that every man's life is sufficiently 
empty, to take it at its very best ; it begins in pain, 
and it is marked all through with privations, and 
denials, and sufferings ; that it is sufficiently empty, 
and that, instead of taking away from it anything 
which would sweeten it or lighten it, or make it 
more pleasant, the part of wisdom would be rather 
to minimize the suffering and to magnify as much 
as possible the innocent pleasures and amusements, 



206 SONS OF GOD. 

so as to make life more comfortable instead of more 
wretched. 

There are also those inside our Church who do 
practise the duties that belong to the fasting season, 
who also give a reason for it, which, to my mind, is 
not satisfactory, although a good reason so far as it 
goes. They say: It is the duty of all men, more 
particularly of all Christian men, to mortify the 
flesh, to bring the body under, to elevate the spirit, 
to control one's passions, to cut away a temptation 
and gratification on this side, and an extravagance 
and luxury on the other side, and bring life under 
control ; that this is best done by during forty days 
in each year taking the body in hand, stripping it of 
certain things which are allowed it at other times, 
saying to it : I am the master and you are the slave ; 
you will have to do for a little while as I tell you to 
do; that it rests upon a certain inherent struggle 
between the body and the soul, between the flesh and 
the spirit. 

Others say that neither of those which have been 
assigned is the true reason. The reason is this : We 
sacrifice certain things, or deny ourselves innocent 
indulgences during a certain period of the year, not 
because we expect to find any advantages from self- 
denial, nor because the things themselves are hurtful, 
but in order that we may have to give. It is for 
sweet charity's sake. We abstain from this thing 
and that thing during Lent, not because the thing 
is wrong, but that they may have the wherewithal to 
put in the alms-basin on Easter Day. 



BREAD OR GOD. 207 

These are explanations of Lent. It is the sur- 
vival of a superstition ; it is in the interest of self- 
mastery ; it is in the interest of alms-giving. 

Now, there is a little truth in all of these, but to 
my mind they are inadequate. I think the phenome- 
non is altogether too large, the practice too striking 
and extraordinary, to be satisfactorily * explained by 
any of these. Call to mind, in the first place, the 
extraordinary prominence of fasting and self-denial 
in the Scripture. The Old Testament is full of it. 
There is the " fast of the fifth month, and the fast of 
the seventh month." Every fifty years there was to 
be a general relinquishment of all individual posses- 
sion in property, and a redistribution. From the 
beginning to the end of the Old Testament, you will 
find an unbroken series of general fasts, set at cer- 
tain periods of the year, and lasting for days and 
weeks some of them. Over and above these you will 
find particular fasts enjoined for particular occasions. 
You will find that certain persons again and again 
religiously vow, that for such a length of time they 
will take no food or drink, or that they will let their 
hair and beard grow, or that they will mortify their 
flesh after some fashion. But it passes over into the 
New Testament also, and occupies a position of promi- 
nence there, which, I think, is not usually realized. 
Our Lord Himself distinctly recognized and incul- 
cated the duty of self-denial under the simplest of 
all its forms, that is, the form of abstinence from food. 
He not only enjoined it, but He said how it was to be 
done, and the spirit of mind that was to go with it. 



208 SONS OF GOD. 

" When ye fast,' 1 He says — assuming that they would 
East — kk when ye fast, be not, as the h} r pocrites, of a 
sad countenance : for they disfigure their faces, that 
they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto 
you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou 
fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face ; That 
thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father 
which is in secret : and thy Father which seeth in 
secret shall reward thee openly" What for? Why, 
for fasting. Take two or three examples as illustra- 
tions of the way that St. Paul treats this same subject : 
M But in all things approving ourselves as the ministers 
of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, 
in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, 
in labors, in watchings, in fastings," thus ranking it 
with prayer, with endurance, with endeavor, with love. 

"Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the 
flesh, to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the 
flesh, ye shall die, but if ye through the Spirit do 
mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live." Now, 
bear these things in mind, — the extraordinary promi- 
nence of this duty of self-denial in the Old and New 
Testaments ; and then add to that this most extraor- 
dinary thing, that it has been practised universally 
throughout the whole of Christendom. If you will 
read the history of the Christian Church you will find 
passing before you a procession, unbroken from 
the days of the apostles until now, — penitentes, 
ilagellantes, stylites, and all sorts of ascetics. 

Then consider still farther that it is an idea which 
is by no means confined to revelation ; that it reaches 






BREAD OR GOD. 209 

out far beyond where the knowledge of our Lord and 
Saviour Jesus Christ has gone ; that it is a custom 
as widespread as humanity itself. The Hindoos 
cast themselves before Juggernaut ; a mother throws 
her baby into the Ganges ; the Canaanites fling their 
children into the fiery arms of Moloch ; the fakir 
whips himself, and treads upon burning coals ; and the 
Mexican swings himself with a hook by the flesh of 
his back. All the history of the world is full of it. 
It is no new idea. It is no invention of those who 
wrote the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament ; 
it is lodged deep in the heart of humanity. Now, 
an idea which spreads out so widely, and gathers 
so much into itself, and occupies so prominent a 
place, is not to be explained by simply saying that it 
is good for a man to bring his body under control ; 
and that it is still better for a man to give to the 
poor. If the first one of these were the object to be 
attained, it might be done better by putting one's 
self into training as for a boat-race. The second one 
misses the mark. The question is not whether one 
shall follow the " model of knighthood " and be like 
Sir Philip Sidney who gave away the cup of water 
for which he was famished, to another soldier who 
needed it worse than he. This is not the question at 
all. The question is not whether Sir Philip shall 
give the cup to the soldier who needs it more, but 
whether he, famishing with thirst, shall pour it out 
on the ground and refuse either to drink it himself, 
or to let the other man drink it. Self-denial, as it is 
taught in the Scriptures, is entirely distinct from the 



210 SONS OF GOD. 

duty of almsgiving, and from the virtue of self-control. 
It rests on reasons of its own. 

What does it rest upon? The truth is, it is the 
most subtle and easy to be missed of all religious 
ideas. It is so easy to mistake it for the Pagan 
thought, that one may " give of the fruit of his body 
for the sin of his soul." It is so easy to empty it of 
all its divine meaning, and turn it into a sort of a 
histrionic, make-believe fast and self-denial. I ask 
you to believe that it is one of the highest and 
most transcendent of all Christian ideas and duties, 
and to notice now, a little, what seems to be the 
ground upon w T hich it stands. Here, as everywhere, 
when one is concerned about a temptation or a duty, 
the best thing to do is to go to the Master. Let us 
go to Him and see. When He was about to begin 
His great life's work, it was necessary that He should 
be tested to find out whether He was fit. He recog- 
nized it. He sought no exemption. All human 
souls have to be tested at some time or other in their 
lives. Sometimes the test is a sharp and bitter 
process ; sometimes it spreads over a long period of 
time ; but no human soul can escape it. When He 
was ready to engage in His life's work, He found it 
necessary that He should be put upon trial. While 
He was undergoing this trial His whole nature was 
so taken up with it, that apparently He forgot all 
about the necessities of His body. He went not up 
into the mountain to fast, He went up to be tried ; 
and the fasting was only incidental to the testing. 
Afterwards, however, He woke up and discovered 






BREAD OR GOD. 211 

that He was hungry. Then came a test. The 
"tempter," the great spirit of evil, says to Him: 
" You are hungry ; here are stones : you are almighty ; 
turn them into bread and feed your hunger." Now 
mark what the alternative was, and what His answer 
was. He says : " Not so : hunger is a bad enough 
thing, to be sure, and I am hungry ; but there is 
something more important than that. 'Man shall 
not live by bread alone, but by every word that pro- 
ceedeth out of the mouth of God.' " Now observe ; 
He has got down to the very foundation of His duty. 
It is a duty which involves a choice. The question 
is Breads or God ? That is the alternative that faces 
Christ. It is the question that faces every man 
who touches Christianity. He stripped it of every- 
thing that is extraneous, and, being there as else- 
where our great Exemplar, He set the example in the 
most striking and simple of all ways. This was His 
dilemma : — Shall He satisfy His body ? or shall He 
satisfy His soul ? It is upon this that this whole idea 
and duty of self-denial rests. It grows out of the 
necessity for a choice between this world and the 
other, — between a man's own self and God. 

But the issue does not ordinarily present itself 
after this simple fashion. If it did I fancy there 
would be few mistakes. If the bald question came 
to any one between his birthright or a mess of 
pottage, I trow very few would choose the mess of 
savory meat. But it does not present itself so. The 
truth is, that in an ordinary man's life these two 
alternatives, instead of confronting each other and 



212 SONS OF GOD. 

allowing him to make a clean, distinct choice, are 
continually confused ; and the difficult thing to do is 
to separate them, to put one on this side and the 
other on that side, so that one can see what he is 
doing. We all promised at our baptism, "to re- 
nounce the Devil and his works." If one could see 
the Devil as he is he could renounce him very easily. 
The difficulty is not in the renunciation, but in 
knowing who the Devil is, — to recognize him, — 
because he comes in such a questionable shape. 
Now, precisely this is true in regard to all the things 
in life, — the good and the evil come to us so 
entangled and mingled, one with the other, that 
ordinarily it is impossible for a man to make a choice 
until he has first taken some pains to disentangle the 
right from the wrong, to put one on the one side, and 
the other on the other, so as to see the difference 
between them. Now, our Blessed Lord has done 
this in the simplest of all possible ways. He has 
reduced life to its first principles ; and we, following 
the example of His temptation, endeavor to do the 
same thing. What is it we are trying to do ? We 
are simply trying, as I say, to reduce life to its first 
principles, — to its lowest terms, — so that we shall be 
able to see what is good and what is bad in it. I 
think you must be conscious of how entirely human 
life does revolve about bodily necessities, — food, 
clothing, and shelter. These things represent con- 
stant quantities in man's wants. Food, clothing, 
and shelter! Notice what these do signify. They 
are most complex entities. Think of the magnitude 



BREAD OR GOD. 213 

of the machinery for the production, transportation, 
and distribution of food ; of all the commercial life 
and action associated with it ; of the social life and 
hospitality which depend upon it. Take the matter 
of clothing. The most imperious of all laws, the 
law of fashion, grows out of it. Competition, vexa- 
tion, vanity, pride, pleasure, — all have their root in 
this bodily necessity. Or shelter, — houses, orna- 
ments, luxuries, all have to do with it. In combina- 
tion with one or the other of these two things, it 
carries with it all practice of hospitality, all kindli- 
ness, all friendliness, all interchange of human courte- 
sies. They spring ultimately from one or the other 
of these three bodily necessities. Now, the bad and 
the good in these things are so commingled that no 
man can tell what is right, and what it is wrong, unless 
he take some trouble to disentangle them. When, 
therefore, we come, as Christian people, to our Lent, 
we simply say, we are going to attempt to do what 
Christ did. We are making an effort to see the 
great alternative, to solve the problem of what is the 
supreme necessity of life, to see what is " bread " on 
the one hand, and what is God on the other. As one 
should say : " Life is a very serious matter at its 
best, generally attended with much pain and priva- 
tion. Usually I lighten it as I go along with pleas- 
ure and with innocent amusement ; but now for a 
little while I will strip it bare, and see what it is. I 
will reduce it, as far as I can, to its simplicity, in 
order that I may see what is necessary, and what is 
not, that I may choose between them." 



214 SONS OF GOD. 

Now, it seems to me that this is what the whole 
duty of self-denial, the whole practice of Lent, rests 
upon. It is the endeavor to realize what is the 
supreme necessity, — whether it is the body or the 
soul, whether it is this world or the other, whether 
it is " bread " or God. The practical outcome of 
the attempt is most beneficent. In the first place, it 
brings one into the Spirit of Christ ; for this is what 
He did, putting on the one side " the glory that He 
had with the Father before the world was," and 
which was an innocent glory, emptying himself so 
as to become as one of us. Now, as we empty our- 
selves we come into the Spirit of Christ, and are 
able to understand Him. And then remember the 
consequence, that in proportion as we see Him as He 
is, in the same proportion we grow to be like Him. In 
practice it works out most wholesomely. Dives, 
when he was clad in purple and fine linen, at his 
dinner-table faring sumptuously, was a most excellent 
man, full of good impulses, which even hell could 
not destroy within him ; for even in the torment his 
second inquiry was whether something could not be 
done to save his five brethren : still, Lazarus was 
starving at his gate. Why ? Not because Dives was 
cruel, but because he did not know what was going 
on outside his garden-wall. Now, it may be in this 
Lent, that within a half-dozen squares of your house, 
children are hungry, women are crying, men are 
blaspheming and thinking of suicide. It may be 
unavoidable, for sometimes poverty is not to be re- 
lieved. Poverty is a penalty which at times the 



BREAD OR GOD. 215 

Christian man cannot relieve without doing violence 
to right. But the great question for us to settle is, 
whether we are taking our " bread " instead of our 
God, while the man at our gate is taking his God 
instead of his bread, or may be going without 
them both alike. 

We may as well confess, however, that this ques- 
tion has no interest or meaning except for those 
who are hungering and thirsting for God. Some 
will find in their Lent a measure of " self-control," 
and they will do well, for it is worth finding. Some 
will find the means to gratify sweet charity, and they 
will do well; but they will all miss the mark and 
fall short, unless they set themselves to satisfy that 
divine hunger whose poignant pangs lead one to 
forget even food and clothing, and to satisfy them- 
selves with that bread of which " whoso eateth shall 
never hunger." 



XVII. 
OLD AND NEW. 



XVII. 

OLD AND NEW. 

"gt* fjeati ♦ . ♦ foas bjfjttc lifte foool, as irrfjtte as snob; anfc f}ts 
eges foere as a flame of fire," 

John, the last survivor of the personal friends of 
Jesus, an old, old man, sat musing by a summer sea. 
An empty world lay all about him- The hoary glory 
of the Orient lay out of sight beyond the eastern 
sea. The hoarse roar of the Empire was too far off 
for him to hear. He sat alone and mused of — 

" The vision of the future, and the glory that would be." 

He pondered of the Faith for which he had been 
exiled to Patmos, his brothers had been stoned at 
Jerusalem, crucified at Rome, scourged at Antioch, 
and thrown to the lions in a hundred amphitheatres. 
He thought of what it was, and whereunto it would 
grow. Like the Oriental he was, his thoughts 
shaped themselves into a vision. His deep ques- 
tionings took outward form, and found their answer 
in a majestic Figure which stood beside and spoke to 
him. The Person whom he saw was at once the 
Genius of Christianity, and its Master. When John 
turned and looked at Him, he saw a man whose " hair 

219 



220 SONS OF GOD. 

was white like wool, and his eyes were like a flame 
of fire." His head was hoary, but his eyes were filled 
with the fire of eternal youth, and his speech was as 
multitudinous as the many-voiced ocean. 

This is the religion of Jesus : venerable as eternity ; 
modern as the changing times ; and capable always 
of " speaking to every man in his own tongue wherein 
he was born." 

I want to speak to yoti of the Old and the New in 
Christianity. What in it is abiding, and what may 
legitimately be changed and renewed ? 

That there are both elements in it, all men allow 
in theory. But how the two may practically be dis- 
tinguished and adjusted is the question which is, at 
this moment, exercising the Christian world. It 
shows itself in the regions of Doctrine, Worship, and 
Discipline. How shall the Church preserve her own 
past, and, at the same time, fit herself to the pres- 
ent? How shall she hold fast the Faith delivered to 
the Saints of long ago, and, at the same time, find 
room for the Faith delivered to the Saints of to-day ? 

How shall she pray in the ancient Liturgies, and, 
at the same time, find fit forms for the expression of 
the new aspirations growing out of the new needs 
of to-day? 

How shall she hold fast to an old order, and yet 
make herself comprehended bya century whose very 
conception of government is different ? 

Was Lord Macaulay right in his dictum that, " so 
far as his religious condition is concerned, a Chris- 
tian of the second century with his Bible was neither 



OLD AND NEW. 221 

better nor worse off than a Christian with his Bible 
in the nineteenth"? 

Speaking soberly, is Christianity capable of being, 
in any way, touched or modified by the passing gener- 
ations ? 

Some will at once answer, "No: by the very 
nature of the case. It came from the hand of the 
Master complete. The Spirit led the first generation 
into all truth, and they placed it upon record. They 
ordained the structure of the Church as from a pat- 
tern given in the mount. She proceeds in a path of 
her own, which runs parallel to the world's course, 
but does not touch it. If she be perplexed at any 
time, or at fault concerning what to believe or what 
to do, she should go back in her own steps until she 
picks up the trail, and then go on along the path 
marked out for her." 

Well, she is perplexed. In every direction old 
arrangements are being felt to be unsatisfactory, and 
changes are being desired. Confessions of Faith 
have grown obsolete. Articles of Religion, which 
once were deemed sufficiently accurate and suffi- 
ciently important to be fought for or fought against; 
to warrant men in persecution or in martyrdom for 
their sakes, — are being allowed to fall into oblivion. 
A Liturgy which many generations pronounced " ad- 
mirable " has been officially pronounced inadequate 
and clumsy. Doctrines like, for example, the Verbal 
Inspiration of the Scriptures, or the Substitutionary 
Theory of the Atonement, or the Miltonic Notion of 
the Fall, which have been deemed at times the very 



222 SONS OF GOD. 

core and essence of the Christian Faith, find no one 
now to say a good word for them. 

The truth is, that from time to time the whole 
conception of the universe is revolutionized by some 
change in the habits of human thought. Such a 
change was compelled by Copernicus. When the 
earth was dethroned by him from her astronomical 
place at the centre of the spheres, and the sun set 
up in her stead, the theology which had adjusted 
itself to the old cosmogony, had to be entirely re- 
adjusted. It is not to be wondered at that the theo- 
logians detested Galileo. Men always dislike those 
who give them trouble. The trouble he gave was 
past all count. It compelled them to do all over 
again, slowly and painfully, what they had fondly 
thought was done and finished for all time. We 
smile now at their folly. Let us be quite sure that 
we understand the genius of Christianity better than 
they. 

An equally profound revolution has been compelled 
in our time. Darwin has compelled greater changes 
than Copernicus did. The system of physical science 
and philosophy in which his name holds the place of 
honor has compelled the religious world to picture 
to itself all anew the process of creation. It has 
changed the connotation of the very word creation. 
It has compelled a re-reading of Genesis and the 
Apocalypse. It has expanded each creative day into 
an aeon, and carried backward the beginning of man 
to a point which would have made Archbishop Ussher 
dizzy to contemplate. It has given a new and awful 



OLD AND NEW. 223 

significance to the theologic phrase "Original Sin," 
by showing it to be a synonym for brute inheritance. 
It has laid its axe to the root of the popular notion 
of the "Fall," and thus will compel a re-writing 
of all systematic Divinity. When Anthropology 
changes, Theology and Soteriology must be modified 
to correspond. 

A similar change in the very substance of religion 
has been brought about slowly and insensibly by the 
spread of Democracy. The writers of the Scripture, 
when they spoke of the government of God, used the 
terms of speech with which they were familiar. But 
the only government they knew was that of despots. 
Historical Christianity is tinged all through with 
monarchical ideas. These have, in our day, not only 
ceased to be fitting, but they have, to a degree we 
seldom realize, ceased to be intelligible. If one were 
writing a Catechism to-day in America, would he 
counsel the child "to submit itself to all its gov- 
ernors, and to order itself lowly and reverently to all 
its betters "? But it is idle to think that men's very 
conceptions of human law and liberty can be pro- 
foundly modified without their ideas of Divine Laws 
being changed to correspond. 

Speaking broadly, it is not too much to say that 
we Americans of to-day are as different from our 
fathers, say at the Eeformation, as they were from 
the members of the Council of Nice. Our mental 
habits, our mental furniture, our moral judgments, 
the tests of truth which we instinctively apply, the 
forms in which our conduct moves, the very eyes 
with which we see Truth, are all changed. 



224 SONS OF GOD. 

Now, in secular things, we do not resist change. 
We know it to be the law of progress, and we assume 
progress to be desirable. We know that an institu- 
tion which stagnates dies, just as an organism which 
ceases to grow begins to degenerate. If it could be 
said of any science that its text-book in use to-day 
is the same one which was in use fifty years ago, we 
would know from that fact that that science was mori- 
bund. It does not disturb us that the language 
which we speak has, by slow and imperceptible mod- 
ification, changed itself since the time of Chaucer, 
so that he and we could not understand one another. 
Governments, laws, customs, manners, speech, — all 
these may change utterly, and we may gain, not lose, 
thereby. So far as all these things are concerned, 
the history of the race may be broken in two at any 
point without disaster. All these only concern the 
particular generation at any time alive. 

But men have the instinct that it is not so with 
religion. That concerns not only the generation 
that now is on the earth, but those who have been 
as well. It looks to " the whole family in heaven and 
earth." "Where are my forefathers?" abruptly 
asked the old Saxon chief with his foot upon the 
Baptistry steps. "In hell !" replied the dogmatic 
priest waiting to baptize him. " Then to hell I'll go 
too," answered the Saxon, as he turned on his heel, 
and strode out of church with his brave men behind 
him. Religion must bind the generations together. 
A break of continuity in it would introduce confu- 
sion in heaven. Jesus avowed that He did not come 



OLD AND NEW. 225 

to destroy but to fulfil the Law and the Prophets. 
A few years ago a review article attracted much 
attention. Its title was " An Advertisement for a 
New Religion." It dwelt at length upon the impo- 
tency of the present forms of Christianity to satisfy 
the present needs. It proposed a substitute, of which 
it sketched the main outlines. In a future number, 
a keen critic pointed out the absurd hopelessness of 
the substitute proposed. But both the Advertisement 
and the answer pointed the double fact that newness 
in the Contents of religion is impossible, and that 
newness in its methods and forms is always necessary. 
Four hundred years ago the Church in Europe faced 
a like situation. There was a new Science and a 
new Philosophy, as there is to-day. The physical 
facts of life had changed their aspect by the dis- 
covery of a new heavens by Copernicus, and a new 
earth by Columbus. An intellectual ferment was 
working in every department of life. The language 
of the Church had ceased to be the language of the 
people. For generations she had been able to secure 
obedience. But an authority which does not rest 
upon the assent of the understanding of the subject 
is doomed. The Ecclesiastics had overlaid the simple 
order of the Church with multitudinous and vexa- 
tious ordinances. The Schoolmen, in the ages of 
their busy idleness, had spun their subtleties about 
the simple Faith, until the whole system had ceased 
to be intelligible. The Humanists turned away from 
the thought of religion with the same distaste, 
though without the moral earnestness, that the man 



226 SONS OF GOD. 

of science does to-day. Then the Reformer began 
his task. His work was to clear away accretions 
and get down to solid fact. But at every turn he 
confronted a doctrine or practice which, though once 
it had been new and strange, had long since become 
intrenched and venerable. When he challenged the 
literal " Inspiration of the Church," devout men 
regarded him with the same horror that devout men 
did him who, thirty years ago, challenged the literal 
" Inspiration" of the Scriptures. 

They dismissed his thesis with the epigram, " There 
is something in it which is true, and something 
which is new : but the true part is not new, and the 
new part is not true." 

But the spirit of truth was with the Reformer. 
It was the eternal vitality of Jesus. It compelled 
the whole Western Church to re-state its message. 
Nor was this confined to the so-called Reformed 
Churches. Rome also, though to a lesser degree, 
yielded to the same necessity. The Church of Rome 
owes as much to the Reformers as does Protestantism. 
It, also, is reformed. It learned a lesson in the 
sixteenth century never since forgotten. That was, 
that if the Church is to lead the people, it must be on 
such terms with them that they can mutually under- 
stand one another. And so it has come about that, 
from the Bishop of Rome, who used to make Con- 
cordats and sign Pragmatic Sanctions with Emperors 
and kings, appears now an Encyclical to working 
men, saying, " Come, now, let us reason together." 

But it was Protestantism which stood for the final 



OLD AND NEW. 227 

authority of each man's reason and conscience as 
against all prescriptions. " Private Judgment, " with 
its attendant responsibility, is the price one must 
pay for being a man. No man may escape from it, 
let him wish it ever so much. So long as it remains 
true that each one must bear the consequences of his 
own acts, both in this life and in the next, so long 
will it remain true that he must stand out for the 
right to order his own acts and thoughts. Of course, 
unless he be a fool, he will have regard to the judg- 
ment of his fellow-men in making up his own. But, 
when all is said and done, he can no more escape the 
necessity of acting upon his own judgment than he 
can escape from his own shadow. If he determine 
to submit himself to the authority of the Church, the 
act of submission is itself a supreme act of private 
judgment. If he accept the authority of the ipsis- 
sima verba of an infallible Book, or the official utter- 
ance of au infallible Man, the situation remains the 
same. The recognition of any " authority " whatever, 
outside that of " the answer of a good conscience 
toward God," requires the expressed or implied assent 
of the individual will, an assent yielded with the 
consent of the understanding. 

A little reflection ought to make evident that 
authority of any sort in the domain of religion must 
defeat its own purpose. Neither the Bible nor the 
Church, nor any process of Reason, can do what God 
Himself cannot do ; that is, to compel the spirit of a 
man to yield itself to God. Would the Spirit of 
God have continued all through the weary ages to 



228 SONS OF GOD. 

strive with men if there had been any authority that 
could have been practically applied ? The very heart 
of Protestantism is its recognition of the fact that 
individual liberty must be commensurate with indi- 
vidual responsibilitjr. Unless the Church will under- 
take for her part to guarantee the eternal welfare of 
a man independently of his belief or conduct, then 
he must be at liberty to regulate his own belief and 
conduct. The Church of Rome has declared her 
readiness to do just this. She asserts her power to 
draw so much of merit as may be needed from the 
treasury of the Saints, and to set it to the credit of 
any sinner she may select from the millions now in 
purgatory. Let him believe it who can, but let it 
be borne in mind that this guaranty on the part of the 
Church is the only condition upon which a sane man 
would be justified in yielding her the " obedience " 
of which ecclesiastics sometimes prate, and which 
they seldom render. 

The in j auction to "try all things, hold fast that 
which is good," did not exhaust itself upon the first 
generation of Christians. It is always in force. In 
theory, no one doubts it. But when one undertakes 
to act upon it, he is sure to be warned, both by his 
own inner sense of reverence and by clamors from 
without, that each particular thing to which he offers 
to apply his test is sacred. 

Let us face the question : " Is there anything in the 
body of Christian Doctrine, as such Doctrine has been 
generally accepted, which a loyal Christian and 
Churchman may properly challenge ? If so, what ? 



OLD AND NEW. 229 

And which ones? Are there "closed questions?" 
and do all the things belong in that category which 
the Bishop of Springfield puts there? Is Dr. Dix 
right when he claims for the Church an authority of 
such a sort that, when she, by formal action of a 
General Council, puts her imprimatur upon any 
proposition, it thereafter becomes a sin for any man 
to question its truth. Was Urban VIII. right when 
he pronounced the Copernican astronomy to be con- 
trary to Holy Scripture and the teaching of the 
Fathers ? Was Moses Stuart right when he denounced 
the heresy that the earth is more than six thousand 
years old? Was Dean Burgon right when he de- 
clared that every chapter, verse, word, and syllable 
of the Bible is inspired and free from error? Is the 
Presbyterian Church right when they arraign their 
foremost Biblical scholars for teaching that Moses did 
not write the Pentateuch ; that the Levitical system 
was not generally introduced until after the Captivity; 
that parts of Daniel are not prophecy, but history 
written after the fact? In a word, where is the line 
to be drawn between those things about which men 
may differ, and those things about which they must 
agree ? which is but another way of asking, " What 
things are abiding, and what things are changeable, 
in Christianity?" 

This is the problem now before the Christian world. 
Its solution is far from easy, but there is no escape 
from the necessity. Many would gladly postpone it. 
Many do not see why it should ever be proposed at all. 
Many see in the attempt the destruction of the Faith. 



230 SONS OF GOD. 

" Religious belief, as it lies in almost every man's 
mind, is associated with beliefs erroneously supposed 
to be implicated in it. Beyond the truth itself, on 
which a man really lives, there is a mass of connected 
belief which not one out of a hundred either attempts 
to dissever from it, or imagines it possible to dissever. 
To disconnect this accretion of secondary beliefs from 
that which is vital is tacitly taken for granted to be 
impossible. That which would remain after the 
amputation, it is assumed would bleed to death. 
Religious beliefs are in the average mind so inter- 
woven with one another by mere effect of association 
that, when one of them is assailed, all are thought 
to be in danger." 1 

The difficulty is in seeing the relative values of 
institutions and doctrines; to distinguish between 
substance and form, between body and clothes, be- 
tween the essential and the accidental in Christianity. 
This is the perplexing task which God, in His Provi- 
dence, has laid upon us. To preserve unbroken the 
continued spiritual life of the Christian centuries, 
and at the same time be in whole-hearted sympathy 
with the age in which we live, — to think with it, feel 
with it, hope with it, speak its speech, and share its 
spirit — this it is to be a preacher of the gospel to-day. 
The most fatal thing which can befall him is a 
doubt of the spiritual capacity of his own generation. 
This is the besetting temptation of the priest. He 
has in mind the saints and doctors of past ages, and 
forgets that they also had the frailties and follies of 

i Fisher: "The Grounds of Belief," p. 454. 



OLD AND NEW. 231 

flesh and blood, and belonged to the same race we do. 
He finds it hard to think that his own contemporaries 
possess a spiritual insight and power of doctrinal 
statement equal to the men who were at Nice, or 
Chalcedon, or Aries, or Hampton Court, or West- 
minster. This leads him to attach an undue impor- 
tance to the forms in which the men of the past 
stated their doctrines and framed their prayers. 

It it, indeed, hard to believe that the promise of 
the Spirit which Jesus gave was meant to find its 
fulfilment, not in the first generation of disciples, but 
in every generation: " He shall take of the things 
which are mine, and shall show them unto you." 
Nevertheless, the truth which, it seems to me, is 
more important than any other to be grasped by the 
Church at this present, is that the nineteenth century 
has the same right to state the truths of Christianity 
for itself as did the sixteenth or the fourth, and may 
as certainly expect the guidance of the Holy Ghost 
as they. 

What I mean is this: Christianity is essentially 
a few fundamental truths. They are the Fatherhood 
of God, the Person and Work of Jesus Christ, the 
presence in the world of a conscious Divine Spirit, 
a Society called the Church, composed of men and 
women who look confidently for a definite form of 
immortality. It has never lost or changed any one 
of these, and cannot be conceived of as doing so. 
But these central truths remain, practically, barren 
and inert until they are expanded, examined in detail, 
and find a lodgement in the apprehensions of indi- 



232 SONS OF GOD. 

victuals. The necessity of so expanding them has 
given rise to a large number of so-called systems of 
doctrine and discipline. Some of these have been 
formally adopted by sections of the Church, as the 
Augsburg Confession by the Lutherans, the West- 
minster Confession by the Presbyterians, the Thirty- 
nine Articles by the Church of England and America, 
and the Tridentine Formularies by Rome. They were 
all formulated nearly four hundred years ago. They 
were easily intelligible by the people to whom they 
were addressed. They were all popular documents. 
They all proposed to put what they conceived to 
be Christian doctrine in a portable, available form. 
Their promulgation was in every case immediately 
succeeded by a period of enormous activity and suc- 
cess on the part of the Church. They have never 
been officially withdrawn, but the Christian world 
has grown away from them. They have largely ceased 
to be intelligible. They no longer express adequately 
the truths which they once did express. In not a few 
cases, they have come to be serious stumbling-blocks 
to men, both within and without the Church. They 
state propositions which are not tenable. It is against 
them that popular attack is led. Dr. Draper, Pro- 
fessor Huxley, Mr. Ingersoll, et id genus omne, find 
their occupation here. Now, the ground is often prac- 
tically taken, and sometines avowed, that we ought 
to cling to them until we are forced to abandon them; 
that we should part with the traditional opinion only 
when the concession is extorted by evidence no longer 
to be withstood. " Never yield an inch of ground 



OLD AND NEW. 2Z3 

until it is found impossible to hold it." No policy 
could, it seems to me, be more foolish or more un- 
Christ-like. Surely, it is not the part of the Church 
to hold a position which should never have been 
taken, until the defenders are forced to abandon it 
and seek another, grumbling and discouraged! 

Dissatisfaction with many of the current state- 
ments of Christian truth is making itself felt on 
every hand. In one body a committee is apointed to 
draw up a new creed, and report it to the next coun- 
cil ; in another, a movement for the revision of the 
confession is going forward. One group of dissatis- 
fied seek for a truer statement among the mediaeval 
formularies. Another set content themselves with 
preaching about the absurdities of Orthodoxy. An- 
other class stands in its pulpit and laments the 
decadence of the old, simple docility, and finds in 
the specific principle of Protestantism the necessary 
eclipse of Faith. But none are unmoved by the 
spirit of the time. Even the Catholic scholars of 
Oxford band together, under the leadership of the 
Principal of Pusey House, to re-examine the Church's 
doctrine. What does it all mean? Is the Gospel of 
Jesus Christ to be supplanted by a new Gospel ? Has 
the Faith once delivered to the saints been lost? 
And are men groping blindly to re-discover it ? Has 
the genius of Christianity grown old and purblind ? 

I reply : this restlessness is not the nervousness of 
senility, but the product of the ever youthful vigor 
of the majestic person St. John saw at Patmos. 
Surely, no one who looks with open eyes at the facts 



234 SONS OF GOD. 

of life to-day can fail to recognize the strong Son of 
God going forth to war ! The love of truth for truth's 
sake, which marks the science of this age, that enthu- 
siasm of humanity which shelters the outcast, strives 
to reform the criminal, makes laws to protect the 
sailor, taxes the rich to educate the children of the 
poor, builds hospitals, asylums, homes, nurses the 
sick, commands the rarest surgical skill and the cost- 
liest anaesthetic for the beggar's brat, that deep sense 
of the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of 
man which refuses to be content with the structure 
of society, until the weakest shall be guaranteed his 
place and share at the banquet of life, — what are all 
these but the manifestations of the Son of Man ? 
The task of the Christian preacher is to translate this 
deep and widespread ethical spirit of Christ into 
intelligible words. The voice of Jesus which John 
heard " o'er land and sea " was a multitudinous voice. 
"Like the sound of many waters." It speaks like 
the roaring of a torrent or the rush of an ocean wind, 
but it also speaks like the lapping of the incoming 
tide and the murmur of the thousand springs breaking 
up out of the earth. One who has been used for a 
long time to hear the voice of God in some single 
monotone, misses many a sound which is as really 
His voice. It is literally true that " day unto day 
uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowl- 
edge. There is no speech nor language where their 
voice is not heard." 

I think I appreciate the dislike that many have to 
this whole manner of speaking and thinking. It 



OLD AND NEW. 235 

seems to them to resolve Christianity into a vague, 
formless influence which cannot be identified at any 
particular point. They love precision. They want 
to state their doctrine in clear, definite, categorical 
propositions. They ask, in exasperation, " Does a 
man, then, hold his creed without knowing precisely 
either what it contains or how long it can be retained 
without revision? " They wish finality in doctrine. 

They would have the Church's forms of faith and 
mode of life fixed once and for all. 

I sympathize with the wish and share in it: — if it 
only could be ! But, alas, fixity is only possible to 
dead things ! Only by endless integration and disin- 
tegration is life possible. The Orthodox Eastern 
Church stands to-day an awful warning before the 
face of Christendom. Centuries ago she lost the 
power of motion. She said, " As I am, will I remain 
through all the ages." And so she sits, a spectacle 
in her Basilica. Old she is, but not venerable. Her 
hair is hoary, but the fire of youth is all gone from 
her leaden eyes. Wrapt in her embroidered vest- 
ments, she slumbers on, as powerless to touch or to 
be touched by the life of the flesh-and-blood men and 
women of Russia and Greece as the mummy of Seti 
is that of the Felaheen of Egypt. 

Thank God, the Church in England and America 
has retained the power of motion ! The life which 
thrills in her is, in our day, seeking new forms of 
expression. The fundamental facts of her life do not 
change, of course. The Apostles' Creed and the gen- 
eral structure of the Church are as changeless as the 



236 SONS OF GOD. 

architectural design of the human body or the con- 
stant faculties of the human soul. I cannot imagine 
why any one should be uneasy as to their continuity. 
Surely, the apostolic men were not. " The removal 
of those things that are shaken signifieth those things 
that are made, that those things whieh cannot be shaken 
may remain!" They do not ask the exemption of 
any article from this process of "shaking." They 
rest serenely in the confidence of its power to main- 
tain itself. 

It will be well for you to bear in mind that our 
Gospel is as multiform as are the myriad-faced aspects 
of human life. In order to be efficient, it must be 
spoken so that every man will " hear it in that tongue 
in which he was born;" that is to say, it must be 
stated in terms of that inner speech which is not the 
same in any two men. The preacher is only the 
interpreter. He takes the words of God, and " tar- 
gums " them to men. He must do this so that neither 
their sanctity nor the meaning be missed. He must 
" speak with tongues." To do this he must know 
men and love them. He must know his own age 
and love it. He must believe in it. He must be 
quick to detect the motions of the Spirit of God in 
the movements of society, and be able to interpret 
the voices which the Spirit is striving to utter. He 
will remember that the Truth which he proclaims is 
older than the Reformation, older than the Councils, 
as old as God ! The glorious company of the Apostles, 
the goodly fellowship of Prophets, the noble army of 
Martyrs, the venerable line of Patriarchs, the shining 



OLD AND NEW. 237 

host of angels, have all shared in it. To each the 
Spirit of God has made it intelligible in part, but not 
exhaustively, " God having provided some better 
thing for us, that they without us should not be made 
perfect." The Spirit of Christ is as protean as is 
life, for " the Spirit is life." This is why it is safe 
against all assaults of its opponents. They cannot 
find it. When the crowd would cast Jesus down 
from the rock, and so make an end of Him, He 
always passes away out of their midst. But it is 
only to reappear again to some other man or group of 
men. 

I bid you, then, not to be dismayed by the doctrinal 
unrest of this our day. It is but the shaking which 
God has ordained. Those things which cannot be 
shaken will remain ; and those things which can be 
shaken ought not to remain. 

Let me commend to you the strong words of one of 
our greatest preachers. 

" Our Faith can suffer and grow pale only if we 
shut it out from the increasing light, and fancy it 
will abide in darkness. The clear shining of knowl- 
edge may dissipate a thousand fancies which we have 
mistaken for realities; but it shall bring to faith 
health and vigor and new life. While many run to 
and fro, and knowledge is increased, Christianity 
cannot be preserved as a cloistered virtue or a schol- 
astic art ; but out in the breezy world, under the open 
sky, rejoicing in the light, its strength shall not 
be abated nor its eye grow dim. Eeverently and 
humbly, but nothing doubting, the Christian of our 



238 SONS OF GOD. 

day may follow wherever new paths of knowledge 
seem opening to his approach ; and though he go down 
into the depths, or wander through realms of strange 
shadows and endless confusions, nevertheless, if he 
remains true to the Spirit sent for his guidance, like 
Dante following Beatrice from world to world, — 
he shall find himself walking in a cloud of light, full 
of all melodious voices." 



XVIII. 
THE FIRST ADAM. 



XVIII. 

THE FIEST ADAM. 

<£en. HHE. 22. 

" $n& tfje ILorfc ffioti sain, iSefjolU, tfje tnan is foecotne as one of 
tis, to knofo gootr anto ebti." 

A well-known writer in a well-known Review 
lately made this statement : — 

"It is easy to see that the 'New Theology' is 
about prepared to join hands with Darwinianism, 
and obliterate the doctrine of the Fall as underlying 
the fact that ' the Word was made flesh.' " 

It is the peculiarity of the ' New Theology ' that 
no one is officially authorized to speak for it, but I 
venture to think that the above statement will be 
silently admitted by those who are under its influ- 
ence as being substantially true. I venture also to 
say why this judgment is accepted by those in whom 
it has reached the distinctness of a judgment. 

The existence of moral evil is not denied by 
any. 

There are in the field three theories as to its ori- 
gin and nature. Of course these theories are not held 
distinctly and unmixed. The same person may, and, 
in point of fact, often does, hold mutually antagonis- 

241 



242 



SONS OF GOD. 



tic fragments of different theories in doctrine and 
philosophy and may be as strenuous in support of one 
part of his contradictory creed as of another. But 
in the case before us the three theories are easily 
separable, in thought at least. 

(1.) The first is that of what for convenience' 
sake may be called " orthodoxy." 

According to it there was, long ago, a primeval 
world which was a paradise. It had a genial climate 
and a fertile soil. No ice-bound oceans or burning 
deserts, no thorns or brambles, no predacious beast or 
pestilential wind, were there. The world was young 
and wholesome. No nerve had ever thrilled with 
pain, nor any living creature looked upon the face 
of death. The plains were smiling with perennially 
golden grain, and the forest bountiful with pen- 
dent fruit. In this Paradise God walked, and was 
lonely. In it He set the newly fashioned Adam, the 
first individual of his race. Into his arms He gra- 
ciously gave the maiden Mother of us all. He 
created them immortal. Their wisdom was tran- 
scendent ; their innocence absolute. 

But with Adam God made a covenant. The mat- 
ter of the agreement was, that perfect obedience and 
unbroken righteousness would be rewarded by con- 
tinual bliss, and warranty against pain and death ; 
and that for disobedience the punishment should be 
capital. The parties to the agreement were God of 
the first part, and Adam the party of the second 
part. Adam did not enter into the covenant for him- 
self alone, but as the representative of all his race 



THE FIRST ADAM. 243 

yet unbegotten. They were to have their chance in 
him, and to stand forfeit if he failed. (Whether 
the covenant were to remain in force eternally, or 
whether, after a certain time passed in obedience, 
he was to have been confirmed in an indefeasible 
right, does not appear.) The simple test for the 
first man's power of moral endurance was to be his 
abstention from a certain attractive kind of fruit in 
the garden where he dwelt. An insidious tempter 
appeared from some unknown and unsuspected quar- 
ter, enlisted the more pliable nature of Eve on the 
side of disobedience, and through her broke down 
the moral resistance of man. He failed in the test, 
and catastrophe unspeakable was let loose ! Smitten 
suddenly with shame and pain, the offenders crept 
away already moribund. The voice of God rolling 
in thunder discovered their hiding-place. The flash- 
ing lightning of an offended heaven burned between 
them and their bower. The jealous earth shot up from 
her bosom the " upas and the deadly nightshade " 
among the kindly forest, and choked the wheat with 
thorns and brambles. The wild beasts, filled, for the 
first time with cruel rage and hunger, rent and de- 
voured one another. The natures of the offenders 
themselves underwent a sudden ferment, which left 
them transformed and totally depraved. Their un- 
born children not only inheiited the taint, but were 
bound by all the penalties appended to the original 
contract broken by their father and representative. 
Thus death physical and moral, the depravity of 
every son of Adam, and all the thousand ills that 



244 SONS OF GOD. 

flesh is heir to, both in this world and in any world 
yet to come, are all the outcome of that transaction 
which, in popular religion and in technical theology, 
is named " The Fall." Most Continental and Amer- 
ican theology is based upon this notion. So uncon- 
ventional a thinker as Dr. Bushnell has a strange 
chapter induced by the theory. If death literally 
came by Adam, how then to account for its un- 
doubted dominion over the lower animals for aeons 
before Adam was made ? The " dragons weltering 
in their prime" lived by tearing one another, and 
were so equipped by nature that they could not live 
otherwise. Dr. Bushnell, seeing this difficulty, hits 
upon the ingenious theory of what he calls " The 
anticipative consequences of sin." 1 That is, the sin 
which was to be, cast its shadow backward, and cov- 
ered the earth from its beginning ! 

The theory before us cannot be more clearly stated 
than in the words of the " Larger Catechism " ap- 
pended to the Westminster Confession of Faith: 
" The ' Fall ' brought upon mankind the loss of 
communion with God, His displeasure and curse, so 
that we are by nature children of wrath, bond slaves 
to Satan, and justly liable to all punishment in this 
world and the world to come." 

Now, whence came this notion ? In the Old Tes- 
tament there is no allusion to it whatever. There 
every case of moral obliquity is referred to the delib- 
erate and wanton choice of the person offending. 
His fault is never modified, or the quality of his 

1 Nature and Supernatural, ch. vil. 



THE FIRST ADAM. 245 

guilt deemed to be affected, by his relation to Adam. 
He is in every case accounted worthy or blameworthy, 
not for what he is qua man, but for what he does of 
his own choice. 1 

The "Fall" is never referred to by Jesus in 
any form. If His words and precepts stood alone 
in the New Testament the transaction would be 
overlooked completely. He concerns Himself with 
the springs of human conduct as they exist now. 
He uncovers and fortifies new and obscured motives. 
He refers righteousness to the indwelling of the 
Spirit of God, but never refers sin to the indwelling 
of the spirit of Adam. 

In the Apocalypse, which unfolds the last scenes in 
the drama of humanity, there is no reference to a 
great catastrophe at its beginning, and the denoue- 
ment would seem to be incompatible with such a 
first act. 

The Catholic Creeds are entirely silent concerning 
it. The Articles of the Christian Faith, assent to 
which is a condition precedent to membership in the 
Christian Church, have nothing whatever to say con- 
cerning the transaction known as the " Fall." 

From all this it seems evident, that if the " New 
Theology " sits somewhat loosely to this theory, it 
does not thereby argue itself to be irreverent towards 
the highest authority or indifferent to fundamental 
truth. 

The portion of Christian Scripture by which the 

1 Edersheim: "Life of Christ," vol. i., book 1. "It is entirely unknown 
also to Rabbinical Judaism." 



246 SONS OF GOD. 

theory has been always upheld is St. Paul's Epistle 
to the Romans, the fifth chapter, beginning at the 
twelfth verse. To the untheological reader the 
meaning is sufficiently evident. The propagandist of 
the new Faith declares that his principal, Jesus of Naz- 
areth, is of divine origin, and has moral relations with 
every human being. But, just as all men are affected 
by the character and actions of their original ances- 
tor " Adam," so the whole race stands affected by the 
character and actions of the Second " Adam." This 
seems to be all that the writer had in mind. He is 
concerned with the position of Jesus, and only uses 
the accepted story of Adam as an illustration and 
analogy, good for what is good. But instead of be- 
ing allowed to remain in the subordinate position of 
an analogy, it has unfortunately been elevated into a 
capital position among Christian dogmas. 

The history of the dogma is, in rough lines, 
easily traced. 1 It was developed by that great sys- 
tem builder, Augustine. It passed, together with 
the rest of his theology, into general acceptance in 
the "Western Church. It was elaborated into curious 
detail during the busy idleness of the scholastic 
period. Dante popularized the story of the Edenic 
Paradise for the Latin races, as did Milton for the 
English-speaking people. Luther, the Augustinian 
monk, brought the theory with him from his cloister. 
Calvin accepted it from his master Augustine, and 
made it the starting-point of his system. Through 
these various channels it has come since the Refor- 

1 Hagenbach : " History of Doctrine," p. 59. 



THE FIRST ADAM. 247 

mation into the popular mind to be the accepted 
Christian teaching concerning the moral status of 
man. 

That the theory, both in itself and in its conse- 
quences, is entirely untenable would seem to be evi- 
dent from merely stating it. It is so well intrenched, 
however, that more than this is necessary. To any 
one who has come under the influence of that mode 
of thinking known as evolutionary, such a catas- 
trophe as that of the " Fall " is a priori incredible. 
Such a thing is out of analogy, both natural and spir- 
itual. On the face of it (if it be so read), it is a 
case of sudden and violent degradation interjected 
between two periods of steady progress. Up to the 
date of the " Fall," and from that date forward, the 
progress is undenied. Instances of degradation, both 
in individuals and families, are very common, but 
they differ from this alleged one in that they are 
slow, final, and irretrievable. Their subjects are left 
stranded on one side of the stream of progress. 
There is no farther use for them, and they cease to 
be. The Miltonic " Fall," on the other hand, is sud- 
den, inconclusive, and the penal cause assigned is no 
sufficient rationale in the absence of any moral or 
religious obligation to accept the fact. The "total 
depravity " supposed to have been the consequence 
of this transaction is not a fact, and never has been. 
A human being without inherent moral goodness — 
inherent in the same way as his humanity itself — is 
something no one has ever seen. It has been ima- 
gined in technical theology, but its actual counterpart 



248 



SONS OF GOD. 



is to be looked for, not in any man or woman, but in 
Mephistopheles or a Houyhnhnm. Apart from the 
somewhat artificial language of the pulpit, neither 
the idea nor the fact ever occurs. 

The associated dogma of inherited guilt is practi- 
cally obsolete also. True, it survives in the stand- 
ards of some Christian bodies, but it has ceased to 
be a conviction to which one may appeal to influence 
conduct. What preacher would dare to assert boldly, 
" You deserve to be damned for your share in Adam's 
act of disobedience " ? 

The dogma is no longer held on the authority of 
Augustine, or rejected with Pelagius ; it has simply 
fallen out of sight in consequence of its intrinsic 
unworthiness and essential immorality. The "New 
Theology " does not accept it or reject it ; it passes 
it by. 

(2.) The theory has in some quarters been rudely 
displaced by another, which seems to be radically 
opposed to it. Indeed, the place occupied by it is 
the one most strenuously fought for by all the forces 
at present in the field. The Theist, the Secularist, 
the Evolutionist, or the Christian, — whichever one is 
able to capture and hold this ground, — possesses 
the key to the battle of modern thought. What is 
the ground and origin of human Right and Wrong ? 
Whoso holds the key to this will win the battle. 
For, practically, men value morals above all else. 
It is admitted on all hands that the sense of right and 
wrong does exist, and that it is, in its degree, at any 
rate, the distinguishing mark of man. But the real 



THE FIRST ADAM. 249 

question is, " Whence comes it, and in what consists 
its binding force?" Those of the extreme Right say it 
is an original endowment of man from God, formerly 
perfect, but now shattered and untrustworthy. Those 
of the extreme Left say, without hesitation, that it 
is a faculty which has been slowly developed in man 
out of the interaction of himself and his fellows 
with their surroundings. In the crude barbarianism 
which they consider to be the original status of the 
race, certain actions were quickly found to tend to 
the general welfare, while certain other actions were 
found to work detriment to the tribe. The first sort 
of course tended to the popularity, and the second 
brought pain or danger to the individual producing 
them. The glow of satisfaction produced in the 
doer of helpful things encouraged him to the habit 
of such actions. Murder, theft, adultery, having 
been found to be dangerous to the community, were 
warmly reprehended. This public sense of dislike 
to the deeds reacted upon the individuals who felt it, 
gradually became fixed in each one, and was trans- 
mitted to his descendants. It had its origin in the 
public weal. It emerges, however, generations after- 
wards, in a permanent faculty, which " had lost its 
memory and changed its name." Nor has it re- 
mained the simple faculty it was when it first became 
self-conscious. Long afterward it, in Mr. Matthew 
Arnold's happy figure, came to be touched by the 
fire of Emotion, and burst into the flame of Reli- 
gion. Since the death of the late Professor Clifford, 
this theory has not had another so able and uncom- 



250 SONS OF GOD. 

promising an advocate. With certain modifications 
due to his more cautious and judicious habit of 
mind, it is the doctrine of Mr. Herbert Spencer. In 
popular scientific periodicals it is assumed to have 
been demonstrated. It has found a lodgement in 
the text-books of schools. It is the basis of action 
for " Societies for Ethical Culture." The theory is 
claimed to be, in Professor Clifford's language, " a 
scientific basis for morals." That very prevalent 
habit of mind which abhors an unsolved problem 
as nature abhors a vacuum, receives and rests upon 
it with peculiar satisfaction. Wherever this theory 
and the popular notion of the " Fall " are sole rivals 
claiming entertainment by educated men, this one is 
almost certain of a welcome. 

And this, notwithstanding the fact that it is 
attended by the very gravest difficulties, both scien- 
tific and moral. The more sober-minded evolution- 
ists, whether Christian or Secular, do not accept it. 
They do not consider it scientific. The facts in the 
case cannot be co-ordinated under it. The savage 
state where the conscience is supposed by the holders 
of it first to emerge is precisely the place where the 
possessor of moral sensibility would be most unfit to 
survive. Where might is right, right is doomed to 
death. Among unmoral creatures, any variation in 
the direction of morality tends toward the extinction 
of its possessor. The faculty coming into existence 
there is compelled by the exigency of the case to 
commit hari-kari. It is " too good to live." " The 
survival of the fittest" is an irrefragable law, which 



THE FIRST ADAM. 251 

may not be suspended even in the interest of moral 
theory. 

Then, again, the induction upon which its advo- 
cates base the scientific theory of morals is open to 
the grave suspicion of having been arranged in the 
interest of the theory. In the nature of the case 
the facts are difficult to come by, and one cannot 
help suspecting that the same skill (as of Sir John 
Lubbock, e.g.} which arranges them in one way could 
just as easily sort and arrange them so as to produce 
an entirely different result. Within the historic 
period, at any rate, there has not as yet been forth- 
coming any instance of a tribe or people making 
moral advance without the aid of light brought to 
them ah extra. In many instances a very high 
degree of civilization has been attained to by their 
unaided development. A Venus di Milo, and a 
code of Roman Law, have proven themselves to be 
within reach, but not a Sister of Charity, or a John 
Baptist. 

Present facts are also against the theory. There 
is no constant relation between knowledge and good- 
ness, nor is there any evidence of a tendency now on 
the part of the vicious to learn righteousness by the 
bitterness of their experience in sin. The theory, 
indeed, is discredited by the eagerness with which 
the chronic wrong-doer accepts it. Anarchists, 
Socialists, Ingersollites, — the whole ignoble com- 
pany of questionable morality — hail it as truth. One 
cannot avoid the feeling that it is, at least in part, 
welcome because it lightens the stress of moral obli- 



252 SONS OF GOD. 

gation. The charge of Lacordaire would seem to be 
at least colorable, that " it consoles us for our vices 
by calling them necessities, bringing in as a witness 
to this a corrupt heart disguised in the mantle of 
science." 

(3.) But the two theories above indicated are 
not the only claimants to a hearing upon the ques- 
tion of the moral progression of man. A third, 
contained compendiously in Genesis ii. and iii., and 
writ large in the whole Christian Scriptures, we 
believe. 

The story in Genesis is too familiar to need re- 
hearsing. It will suffice to point out that it assumes 
to be a distinct account of a veritable occurrence. 
It is sharply separated from what precedes and 
follows in the narrative, though evidently related to 
both. Like the portion of the story which precedes 
it, it moves with majestic stride, an aeon in a para- 
graph, with space for a year of God's days between 
verses. It is couched in a language so Oriental 
and so poetic that even Augustine warned against 
dangerous literalness here. 

The first chapter, and to the fourth verse of 
the second, sketches the whole of creation, from the 
chaotic nebulous mist to the introduction of the crea- 
ture fashioned in the image of God, which is called 
" Adam," i.e., man. This sketch is the mighty frame 
into which all that comes after is to be fitted. This 
having been completed, it proceeds to recount the 
history of the creation in which the whole long- 
drawn movement has culminated. It refers most 



THE FIRST ADAM. 253 

briefly to the preparation of the earth to his use, 1 
connects him as to his physical side with matter, 2 
endows him with life, 3 and then enters upon the 
history of the development of man's moral and reli- 
gious life, which is the subject matter of the Old and 
New Testament Scriptures. This progress is con- 
ceived to be by a series of continually recurring selec- 
tions. The first of these is recorded in the story 
before us. There is no intimation there that " Adam" 
and " Eve " were the absolute beginning of the race. 
There is nothing in the word Adam to indicate 
whether it means man, or is a proper name for an 
individual. It may mean either. In point of fact, 
it is used in both senses — as the word " day " is 
used both for the whole time covered by the creative 
process and for one of its periods. For the writer 
of Genesis, having for his purpose to narrate the 
moral development of the race, it was sufficient to 
begin where that began. To this end he states that 
God took a man and a woman, — (i.e. a family), — 
set them in circumstances where the new faculty 
with which He had endowed them would have its 
proper and necessary environment. That this selec- 
tion left to the natural process of degradation those 
who were not chosen would seem probable from the 
following considerations : — 

1. It is in the analogy of God's method of 
dealing with men since history has recorded the 
same. Thus Genesis occupies itself only with the 
fortunes of Seth and his line. Cain, his brother, is 

i Gen. ii. 5. * lb. 7. 3 ib. 7. 



254 SONS OF GOD. 

permitted to wander to the land of Nod, 1 where he 
founded a nation, — a nation which passed through 
the stages of pastoral life, 2 concentration in cities, 3 
developed the industries, blossomed into art, burst 
into music, 4 and then passed forever out of sight and 
hearing. Abraham is selected from his Acadian fol- 
lowers, while they are left to complete the cycle of a 
civilization untouched by any divine Spirit, and then 
sink into their decay. Isaac is taken, and Ishmael is 
left. Jacob is chosen, and Esau rejected, — and so 
following. " One shall be taken, and the other left " 
seems to have been the method of God's procedure 
always. Selection implies a corresponding rejection. 
The Bible is as remorseless as science itself. For 
the purpose of Scripture, moral fitness is the test. 
The calling of Adam would seem to be only the first 
of many such selections, not differing in kind from 
that of Abraham. 

2. In certain obscure nooks and corners of the 
earth, there exist small groups of creatures, which, 
while among men, seem not to be of them. 5 They 
have in their persons and their languages traces of 
better days. They seem to have been left stranded 
by the stream of development. So low in the scale 
of intelligence, so destitute of moral sense, are they, 
that it is difficult for one to look upon them and 
believe that they belong to the race which has the 
first Adam at its start and the second Adam at its 
culmination. 

1 Gen. iv. 16. 2 n>. i v . 2 0. 3 ib. iv. 17. 4 lb. iv. 22. 

6 For example : the Bushmen, the Australian aborigines, the Veddahs of 
Ceylon, etc. 



THE FIRST ADAM. 255 

3. Traditions of the " Fall " are only found 
among those whose ancestry can be traced to a com- 
mon origin, or who have come in contact with the 
race of Adam at some point in their history. 

A family is chosen by God, and led by His provi- 
dence into a fertile and well-watered country, 1 rich 
in gold and precious stones, 2 surrounded by the flora 
and fauna 3 which are the concomitants always of 
civilization. 4 In these surroundings occur that chap- 
ter in human history, which, whether relatively or 
absolutely the beginning, is, at any rate, a supreme 
epoch. It is the beginning of human religion. 

The story sounds far away, and strange. To one 
who is accustomed to the precision of modern scien- 
tific statements, it even seems grotesque, — an echo 
of the childish stories of a youthful world ! Taken 
broadly, however, it manifests an insight which on 
any theory, save the Christian, it would be folly to 
look for in such an early time. It rests morality 
upon those clear foundations where the broad com- 
munis sensus of intelligent and upright men in- 
stinctively look for it. It declares : — 

1. A personal Gfod who can speak. 

2. A human faculty which can hear. 

3. A power of will which can choose. 

4. That the essence of wrong-doing consists, not in 
damage to the community, but in disobedience to Grod. 

* Gen. ii. 8. * lb. ii. 11. * lb. ii. 9. 20. 

* It seems hardly necessary to point out that " Garden " in this connec- 
tion is a misleading term. The idea of extremely limited space, which the 
word conveys, is foreign to the story. " Paradise?* in its classical use, is 
better. The idea is, an expanse of park-like territory. 



256 SONS OF GOD. 

This new family of Adam, alone of all creatures, 
having reached the stage of knowing right and 
wrong, have their new-born faculty nourished and 
developed by food convenient, and in a fit environ- 
ment. In the garden of the world they feed upon 
the fruit of the "tree of knowledge of good and 
evil." " Forbidden " fruit it is indeed, — food which 
may be eaten only at a dreadful risk. Knowledge 
brings judgment always, and must pay the price of 
its being. When moral faculty rises to the state 
of self-consciousness, brute-like innocence is left 
behind forever. The way of return is closed as by 
Cherubim with fiery swords. Profound degradation 
is possible thereafter, but not along the lines by 
which the creature came. He can move downward 
but not backward. His fellowship is no longer with 
the gentle creatures of the garden, whose nature he 
heretofore shared, but with their Maker and their God. 

"And the Lord God said: Behold the man is 
become as one of us, to know good and evil. And 
now, lest he put forth his hand and take of the tree 
of life and live forever, — therefore the Lord God 
sent him forth from Eden; and He placed at the 
East of the garden Cherubim, with flaming sword 
which turned every way." 

" And so I live, you see, 
Go through the world, try, prove, reject, 
Prefer, still struggling to effect 
My warfare ; happy that I can 
Be crossed and thwarted as a man, 
Not left, in God's contempt, apart, 
With ghastly, smooth life, dead at heart, 
Tame in Earth's paddock as her prize !" 



THE FIRST ADAM. 257 

Of the outcome of the transaction, there can be no 
doubt. It was clearly great gain, — maybe a falling 
short of the best then possible, but clearly a rise above 
what went before. Something better still did come 
into the field of moral vision, even then. The " Tree 
of Life," the possibility of immortality, was there. 
But it came into sight only, a long way off, and out 
of reach. Only as a memory and a hope did it sur- 
vive in the tedious steps of progress, until, in the 
fulness of time, the perfect Man " brought life and 
immortality to light." 

Moreover, there comes crawling upon the stage, 
the wily, ignoble representative of moral Evil. When 
man emerges as a moral being, he must take his place, 
perforce, in the league of spiritual states. He has 
thenceforth to do with many interests. He is a 
" being of large discourse, looking before and after." 
It is no fantastic Oriental conceit which introduces 
Satan to the first man who could comprehend his 
forked speech. That man must confront the Eternal 
Nay in virtue of his station. The doctrine of super- 
natural evil is developed in the Christian Scriptures 
pari passu with the process of redemption. The 
Christian smiles when he hears the fact of such 
existence called in question. He is quite aware that 
in the Secular Creed there is no Prince of Darkness. 
But he knows also that there be a thousand things 
not dreamed of by that philosophy. He reads hope- 
fully the obscure prophecy of better things to be 
attained through much pain, by the seed of the 
woman, and he knows that much of that evil is 



258 SONS OF GOD. 

neither brute nor human. If it were, he should de- 
spair of the race at the outset. His solace and his 
ground of hope, when the brute within him is turbu- 
lent and the spirit of man is overladen, is the consid- 
eration that "it is not I, but sin that dwelleth in me." 
The first of these theories, briefly sketched, is pro- 
pounded by the popular and so-called " Orthodoxy; " 
the second by the Secular Science ; the third by the 
Christian Scriptures. The first is moribund. The 
second is dangerous. The third is substantially true. 
Make what allowance one will for the obscurity, the 
puerility, of the story, the fact still remains, that the 
moral progress of the race has been but the develop- 
ing of the picture there sketched in broad outline. 
He whose way of thinking has been most profoundly 
impressed by the great thought of Evolution compre- 
hends it best. He finds himself caught in the sweep 
of a majestic movement similar in kind to that which 
he has followed from the monad to the man. Here 
again, as at other times, the progress halted, either 
helpless or at fault, and God vouchsafed the gift of 
a new motive force. Here His Gift is nothing less 
than the inbreathing of His own spirit. It endows 
its recipient with that Divine quality in virtue of 
which he is capable, under suitable conditions, of 
being "born again." It accounts for the complex 
and contradictory impulses which contend in the 
arena of the soul. It accounts for the old man as 
well as the new. It tells him the name and origin 
and limitation of the strange tempter which whispers 
in the secret chambers of his heart. It brings him 



THE FIRST ADAM. 259 

in sight of immortality, and bids him long and strive 
mightily therefor. It bids him work amid briers and 
thorns ; but when he lifts up his face he hears that 
" he has become as one of us." It binds him to God. 
It gives him sanction for conduct, and hope for infi- 
nite progression. It sets him in the sweep of a dra- 
matic movement. It accounts for the faults of the 
patriarch, for the faith of the apostle, and the fault- 
lessness of the Perfect Man. 



HISTORY 

OF THE 

AMERICAN EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 

FROM THE PLANTING OF THE COLONIES 
TO THE END OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

BY 

S. D. McCONNELL, D.D., 

Rector of St. Stephen's Church, Phila. 

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CHRIST IN THE NEW 
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i2mo, cloth, $1.00. 



press Bottces: 

"A philosophical, keen and clever mind has given us in brief form, 
one of the most satisfactory studies upon these important topics that we 
ever tried." — The Living Church. 

"A thoughtful and prudent balancing of the arguments and con- 
siderations that are apt to be uppermost in the speculations of open and 
inquiring minds in these times." — The Independent. 

li I have never seen so much thought put into so narrow limits 
or so clearly and concisely stated." — Rev. E. A. Warriner. 

" This book is a vigorous essay on the burning question regarding 
the seat of authority in religion. It is marked throughout by candor, 
vigor and incisiveness of thought and will repay a careful reading." — 
The New Englander and Yale Review. 

* ' The author of this volume has already become favorably known 
to all thinkers upon such themes by his * Studies in Hegel's Philosophy 
of Religion.' His honesty and fairness, his clearness of statement, 
and the vigor of his style unite to form a model in this method of dis- 
cussion. It is a book compelling close thought, and filled with stimu- 
lating, healthful, interesting work for good thinkers or those who would 
become such." — Public Opinion. 

" He writes as a scholar and a philosopher, and his discussion in 
the present work is timely and fitted to restrain adventurous minds 
rom dangerous extremes." — The Interior. 



THOMAS WHITTAKER, 

PUBLISHER, 

2 & 3 BIBLE HOUSE, ISTIEW YORK. 



BISHOP THOMPSON'S BOOKS. 



THE WORLD AND THE LOGOS. 



The Bedell Lectures for 1885. Square 121110, cloth, $1.00. 

"As a superb piece of dialectic, as a capital example of good 
fighting, this little book will be a real enjoyment." — The Churchman. 

THE WORLD AND THE KINGDOM. 



The Bishop Paddock Lectures for 1888. Fourth Edition. 

i2mo, cloth, 75 cents. 

" To say that these lectures are admirable is saying but little — they 
are more ; they are eloquent, forceful and convincing. Their lines of 
argument are well laid, and the reader lays the finished volume down 
with a fuller faith and a larger and stronger hope." — Christian at Work. 

"It is one of the suggestive books of the day, not because of any 
new theories or startling statements, but because of the clear, keen way 
of putting much that is commonplace. " — Public Opinion. 

THE WORLD AND THE MAN. 

The Baldwin Lectures for 1890. i2mo, cloth, $1.25. 

Just out. 

A series of brilliant lectures in continuation of the line of thought 
in the above volumes. The titles of the several lectures are : The 
Outlook, Led Up, Tempted, Bread, Kingdoms, The Law of the Case, 
The End. The book is unusually vigorous and refreshing. 

COPY. 

Essays from an Editors Drawer on Religion, Literature 
and Life. Fourth Edition. i2mo, cloth, $1.50. 



*** Copies sent postpaid on receipt of price. 

THOMAS WHITTAKER, 

2 and 3 Bibi^e House, New York. 



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